


Dreams Don't Grow On Trees

by poetic_leopard



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam's Typical Self-Depreciating Commentary, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Happy Endings Galore!, M/M, Ronan Swearing in Latin, SO MUCH PYNCH THOUGH, Trigger Warning For Adam's Abuse, lots of cuteness, much angst, much fluff, pynch goodness, these gay nerds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:58:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6274357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_leopard/pseuds/poetic_leopard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a collection of one shots and drabbles that I wanted all in one place, but also known as The Pynch Treasure Chest. Ratings may differ as this is updated. My trash can status however, will remain a constant throughout.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Library

  **In The Library**

Summary:

* * *

Adam Parrish is a reference librarian at Aglionby library, Ronan Lynch finally has a reason to crack a book.

* * *

Adam Parrish was tired. He was always tired; but he was particularly tired that Tuesday afternoon, almost wishing he had some toothpicks he could shove in his eyes to keep from dosing off right there where he'd been re-stacking the shelves.

The night before had been an absolute nightmare. It had began like any other; he'd returned from the garage at around nine pm, sifting around in the kitchen making a sandwich for himself when his father had walked in on him, empty beer bottle in hand and eyes promising daggers.

Robert Parrish then proceeded to decide that he was standing wrong, or placing the bread on the plate wrong, or breathing wrong or _existing_ wrong.

Perhaps _nothing_ was wrong.

Perhaps, his hungry fists were just famished.

_Twenty days._

_He'd managed to go twenty days without an accident._

And then of course, his streak of good luck diminished, and the nightmares reemerged.

When he finally crawled into bed that night, he did so with the stale taste of blood still surging in his mouth and his ribs stinging like his lungs had been replaced with cacti. He'd forgotten all about dinner, and his stomach was an empty crypt. Sleep was a distant continent, so he'd stayed up till five am reading; it was the only way he could get his mind off the spite that rolled off him in waves.

_I hate him I hate him I hate him so much._

_One day one day one day._

One day he was going to get out. One day Robert Parrish would lick Adam Parrish's feet. One day he would be just like his wealthier peers, tall as a tree and sleeping on a bed of cashmere or velvet instead of bones. In order to do that, he had to work his ass off. In order to do that, he had to keep all of his jobs, including this one.

He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

Working in the Aglionby school library had made him subject to some strange encounters and some even stranger people. Aglionby was bursting to the brim with nutty spoilt rich kids who drove around in cars fancier than those cakes you got at tea parties, clothes that were stolen right off a Forbes or Celebrity Today or Victoria Secret catalogue, and plenteous pricks who claimed they never used any words with less than three syllables in them.

Adam loathed them; all of them. Okay. Maybe not _all_ of them.

It was surprising what you could gauge about a person from the condition they kept a borrowed book in, or the way they traced their fingers over a frayed page, or from how you caught them sneaking glances at you from across the room.

* * *

Ronan Lynch was not a fan of libraries. He was not a fan of homework, or books, or stacks and stacks of endless shelves that oft gave him a headache by merely staring at them too hard.

He was, however, a big fan of the boy who worked there.

* * *

Adam rolled his eyes, staring at the boy asleep like a log against the stacks, a Latin book sitting open and neglected in his lap, his lips slightly parted and a leg spread out in front of him.

This was the third time this _week_.

Adam wanted to rouse him; he really did but this boy looked awfully... pleasant in his sleep.

Usually, he was always stomping around the library, disrupting the peace of the place by huffing like a bull. Usually, he was all sharp edges and knifed expressions. He looked like he belonged in a dank alleyway instead of a school library.

In his sleep however, he seemed as harmless as a baby bird.

Adam had seen him around campus quite a few times, usually, with a pair of other boys. When he wasn't at the library, he was a three-headed dog, all Adam knew was that one of the heads was Richard Gansey, everybody knew who Richard Gansey was, Adam suspected even the president of the United States knew who he was; probably followed him on Twitter.

Richard Gansey was the poster child for Rich White Guy Monthly; he was an Aglionby staple; handsome, firmly polished (like he wasn't a person, but a museum), whizzing past scholarships like they were simply pot holes.

He was a finely printed piranha; he smiled with all his teeth and installed outdoor public libraries.

Boys like him spent their summers in the Hamptons at glorified yacht clubs, had their heads buried in new necks every night and wasted their parents' money on stream-cleaning, expensive colognes and flashy automobiles.

Adam was instantly in awe of him.

It made sense for little fish like him to be astounded by the mighty swamp kings.

He disliked him, but he also kind of wanted him to know his name, to have him acknowledge his existence and make his existence matter. The thing about Gansey was that he was the kind of person you respected, no matter how much his voice sounded like a money printing machine, no matter how many ties he probably named after assassinated US presidents.

The boy in the leather jacket; or that's how he recognized him since he was always clad in one, was obviously one of Gansey's prized possessions, which in turn made Adam nervous and also slightly, and very unintentionally; jealous.

He nudged the boy with his foot, lightly.

* * *

Ronan's eyes flew open.

He'd been dreaming that it was the zombie apocalypse and Gansey and he were trapped in a building with a bomb in it and phantom helicopters were swarming the skies and a monkey -

He froze when he looked up to meet the eyes of a very exasperated looking Adam.

Ronan tried to contain his heart inside it's cage as he stretched and feigned nuisance, his features easily pertaining to a well-practiced scowl.

The boy with the sandy hair said something to him, was speaking directly to him, but Ronan's gaze had fallen on his lips. The reference librarian had really nice lips, and they kind of reminded Ronan of dried autumn leaves, and then Ronan mentally stabbed himself for thinking about stupid fucking autumn leaves.

_Who the fuck was he? Shakespeare?_

He really didn't like the inappropriate thoughts that swarmed his head whenever he happened to glance at this boy and yet... and yet.

"What?" Ronan blinked, realizing he hadn't paid attention to a word he'd said.

Adam sighed in annoyance, before repeating himself. "We're closing. Please go home," he muttered.

Ronan jerked up, pushed the book off his lap and handed it hastily to Adam. His fingers brushed Adam's while doing so, but Ronan really didn't have time to dwell on how wonderfully cool the boy's fingers felt. He yanked his phone out of his back pocket and gawked at the time.

He had to pick up Matthew from school, and then pick Gansey up from Monmouth.

"Fucking fish sticks," he muttered. " _Bovis stercus! Filius canis_. I have to go!"

He scurried out of there as quick as lightning.

* * *

Adam merely stared at the boy's hurrying figure until he disappeared out the exit. Book still in hand, eyes wide as windows.

_Did he just swear in fucking Latin?_

* * *

"Adam! You missed me in English Lit today!" Blue called, strolling over and leaning against his desk, eyelashes fluttering. "I handed this guy his ass when he sparked an argument with me about sixteenth century sexism," she explained. "By the time I was done with him, he was just five minutes away from bursting into a fit of boyish tears,"

Adam smiled endearingly up at his friend. "What would the world do without your enriching ways, Blue?"

"Descend into chaos, obviously," she grinned.

Blue was clad in a baby blue dress with white laces and paper butterflies stitched onto the neckline and the hem, her choppy hair was all up in a hundred clips as usual and her eyes were light as dandelions. Blue was pretty, and she made Adam's stomach turn. They'd kissed a couple of times but eventually they'd figured they were better off as friends. Adam had been disappointed at first, but it hadn't wrecked his entire being like it should have.

He supposed he was just glad they were still friends.

Blue was the odd, wonderful tinsel at the top of the tree and he loved her.

And though Blue would literally sabotage him if he said it out loud, he had a feeling she was crushing on Richard Dick Gansey.

"So," she said. "Can you skip off work early and meet me at Nino's in the evening? There's a free milkshake in it for ya, my boss doesn't ever have to know."

Adam sighed. "Thrilling as that sounds, I have a shift at the garage today, and there's this big test on Thursday that I have to cram for -"

"And the world is running out of cows and the sun's going to swallow us whole on Saturday and blah blah blah. You never have time anymore."

"I know," he muttered, dejectedly. "It's just, my dad -"

"Do you want me to fight him? I swear I'll fight him if I have to. I'll carve his heart out and hand it to you as a boxed present."

Blue had found out about his dad's abuse, and she was constantly offering to beat him up for him. She was also constantly begging him to do something about it, to move out, to press charges on him. Blue didn't understand that he couldn't, that he'd kill him; he would literally _kill_ him. He had a plan, of course, but it was long-term. He merely had to be patient and work hard and wait. At the end of the day, Blue realized that it was his life and it was his choice and she wasn't about to get involved in something that was strictly his business, his headache, his catastrophe.

Blue was the most sensible girl he knew.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that offer someday."

Blue merely rolled her eyes. "I've got to go, Calla's picking me up and I'm afraid she's going to start another wrestling match with the janitor. I'll see you later. Try and stop by Nino's today, okay?"

Adam nodded.

"His name is Ronan by the way, Ronan Lynch," she started.

Adam frowned. "What?" then, "who?"

"That boy who keeps hovering around the library like a lost lamb. He's a friend of Gansey's."

Adam's face darkened. "I know," he said, in a low voice.

"I just thought you should know. I think he totally has a crush on you."

Adam felt his cheeks get hot. "Get out of here, Sargent."

She stuck her tongue out at him teasingly and sauntered out of the library.

He took a deep breath and stared down at his Chemistry textbook, trying incredibly hard to _focus_.

* * *

On Thursday afternoon, the boy - _Ronan Lynch_ , made a reappearance.

"I need a book," he said evenly, chewing at one of the several leather bands he had tied around his wrist and blinking at him.  
  
Adam sighed. "What's it called?"

"I don't know, it's a textbook."

"I'm sure it is, but I need more than that if you want me to help you."

"It has a red cover?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "No, I cannot help you find your textbook if you don't know what it's called, and no, 'it has a red cover', doesn't narrow it down."

Ronan just stood there staring at him, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other. "Well, damn," he said, scratching his cheek in puzzlement.

Adam pressed at his temples. "Okay. What class is it for?"

"Advanced History,"

Lucky for Ronan, Adam was in the same class and knew exactly what book he'd been prattling on about. Adam did share a couple of classes with Ronan, but whilst he sat on the first row so he could be closest to the professor, Ronan sat way at the back with his conjoined twins, Gansey the Third and that boy who sometimes came to class with glitter all over his clothes and hair. Gansey always raised his hand in every class and embarrassed Ronan. Every teacher Adam was on good terms with was on even _better_ terms with Gansey, they even doted on him.

Adam nodded. "Follow me," he said, parting with his desk as he led the other boy through the aisles of books. The Aglionby Library was very spacious and it always smelt rusty like dust and old scrolls. The wide windows on the right side of the library spilled plenty of light into the room, the shelves were all neatly stacked and labeled, some of the books had titles engraved in golden ink. The floor was carpet; and bean bags and wooden chairs lay scattered around the space for students to kick back on or study at.

He quite enjoyed being there, he felt at peace, like he could hear his own thoughts for once. He felt safe and protected, and honored to be surrounded by all this knowledge. It was one of his favorite places to be; and just like when he was working under the hood of a car, all covered in grease and oil and sweat, he felt like this was somewhere his father's shadow couldn't follow him. This was something that belonged to him. These books, these shelves, these carpets.

All of it.

 _His_.

"Here," he said, pulling out a red leather bound book and handing it to Ronan. "It's most likely this one," he suggested. Ronan studied the book, and Adam caught himself staring at the other boy's eyelashes. He had thick lashes for a boy. Long and dark. They reminded him of insect wings when he blinked lightly.

Ronan looked up, Adam looked away.

"Dude," he breathed. "You're a life saver. Thanks."

"No problem," Adam forced a smile.

"No," Ronan said, quickly. "You should let me properly thank you."

Adam felt his stomach drop into his shoes.

"Really, it's fine. It's my job. Which... Which I should really get back to," he said, pointing flimsily towards his desk.

Ronan didn't really look dejected, he merely shrugged. "Your loss, Sherlock. See you around."

Something livid burned in Adam's gut. Something he couldn't quite place.

* * *

Ronan was disappointed, but he was also very good at not letting his emotions run rampant across his face.

Who cared if he fucking rejected him?

He was really no-one to Ronan anyway. Just a stupid boy who worked at a stupid library.

Just a stupid boy who made Ronan hate himself, who made Ronan question his very being, whose smile melted inside Ronan's chest like chocolate syrup, whose oceanic blue eyes looked prismatic enough to start a scavenger hunt in, whose long, pianist fingers Ronan sometimes imagined tracing the curve of his spine, the depression of his collarbone, the length of his chest...

_Get a fucking grip on yourself you fucking weasel._

Ronan thought he really needed to learn how to separate dreams from reality.

* * *

One day, Adam eavesdropped on a conversation between Gansey and Ronan.

A book stack separated them, but he could see them through the slits in between the spaces.

He pretended to dust the shelves.

"You have got to start getting your grades up, Ronan. I had to pull fifteen strings to keep them from kicking you out. _Again_. And you know how Declan -"

"Fuck Declan," Ronan snapped, agitatedly. "I don't give a flaming shit about what he has to say about me."

Gansey let out an frustrated sigh and it sounded different from a normal person's sigh, it sounded kind of like a melodic breeze.

"Ronan Niall Lynch," Gansey snapped, using what sounded like his fatherly voice. "You are going to study for this test even if I have to shove this entire library down your throat. Do we understand each other?"

' _Potes meos suaviari clunes_ ," Ronan swore.

Adam felt his hair stand on end whenever that boy cursed; it was fucking musical. It sounded like a poem, or a bird song, or a crashing wave. How on earth did he manage to make such vile words sound so beautiful? It had to be a kind of superpower.

Adam hadn't understood exactly what Ronan had said, but he was pretty certain it involved the word 'ass'.

"Stop flashing your Latin at me," Gansey said. "If you know what's good for you, you'll take my advice and crack a couple of books. I have to attend this charity gala tonight for my mother's fundraiser, but tomorrow, we're going to sit down and we're going to study."

"Suck my dick,"

"Gladly. After you've completed chapters seven, eight and nine."

Ronan's expression seemed to soften like crushed ice. Adam could tell that whatever thrall Gansey seemed to have on everyone, it certainly extended to Ronan as well.

"Fine," he said, between gritted teeth. "But know that I'm plotting your sudden and gruesome death as we speak."

"I love you too, Lynch." Gansey called, as he ambled off.

* * *

That afternoon, as Ronan began to sift through book shelf after book shelf, looking for the text books he would need to cover for the big test next week, he heard a voice call out to him.

It was Adam.

He stood there, pretty as ever, sandy hair slightly mussed, in his seemingly favorite Coca-Cola t-shirt and those worn-out jeans with a couple of holes in the knee areas that fit him slightly too well. He was clutching three very fat very daunting looking books to his chest.

"Ronan!" he called out again.

There was something about the way his name fell out of his lips that made Ronan's entire body shudder like shock waves. He didn't say his name in a hurry, he took his time, rolling every syllable around in his mouth like he wanted it to last, like he was hanging on to the skeletal remains of a hard candy he'd been sucking on. Ro-Nan.

Ronan shuffled over towards the boy, secretly hoping he couldn't hear his heart speeding like a fucking bullet train. "These are the books you'll need to cover," he explained.

"Just take care of them. Okay?" he added.

Ronan frowned. "How did you know - ?"

"I just happened to overhear," Adam said, quickly, averting his eyes.

Ronan smirked darkly. "Even the walls have ears huh."

"Just take the books, Lynch."

"Thank you."

* * *

Ronan yawned, rubbing his eyes and trying not to drool onto the book he'd been sieving through. He was going to fall asleep right there on the table. He felt heavy-lidded and sluggish, but everytime he almost dozed off a haunting image of a fuming Gansey popped into his mind and jarred him right out of his trance.

These books had _so_ many words. Page after page after fucking page. _Who even wrote these god damn dissertations? Some lonely fuck who probably had a lot of time on his hands_ , Ronan thought.

The swirling streetlights from outside the window tinged the library in dull blue hues. It was nine-thirty pm, and the library was a ghost town except for the night guard who was stationed outside. The book he'd been going through was one of the three that Adam had assigned him.

He couldn't stop thinking about this random act of kindness.

_Why did he do it? And had he really been listening in on our conversation that day?_

It didn't matter. It totally didn't.

Ronan turned the page, and his eyes widened when he found a little neon post-it note tucked into it. _I've marked the chapters you should pay extra attention to. These are the ones most likely to appear in the examination. Wouldn't want Gansey to throttle you to death, now would we?_

Ronan stared and stared. He ran his fingers over the neat, intricate and slightly hasty handwriting. Adam's.

He thought he was going to die.

* * *

Adam caught Ronan at the computers instead of studying for his big test.

He was making a racquet; watching videos without headphones on and Adam's boss had requested him to kindly tell Ronan to fucking quit it.

Adam stood behind Ronan's chair and gawked momentarily. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Ronan to be watching, perhaps a Japanese horror film, a rap music video, perhaps one of those clips that taught you how to hot wire a car.

Instead, he was on YouTube watching _baby animal videos._

Adam couldn't help it, he stifled a laugh.

Ronan froze in front of him.

"Are those turtles humping or giving each other a massage?" Adam asked.

He really wanted to yell at Ronan, to politely asked him to fucking quit it like his boss had asked; but he couldn't help himself, he was flabbergasted. Ronan was just a fireworks display of surprises. This seemingly punk, biker boy in his leather jacket and with his shaved head and expensive jeans was sitting there in their college library and watching fucking animal videos.

It was hilarious, and kind of admittedly adorable.

He really wanted to yell at Ronan, he really should've been professional, but those baby animals were really cute.

"Who cares? They're turtles," Ronan huffed, instantly switching it off. "I had Creepy Pasta open on the other window," he explained.

"I'm sure you did," Adam muttered, choking back another laugh.

"Piss off, Parrish."

"Just put on headphones next time you're watching your cute wittle animal videos, okay? Or my boss will kick you and me both out of the library."

Adam didn't know it was possible for Ronan Lynch to blush, but there he was, in front of him, cheeks stained red, his icy blue eyes melting softly in the sunlight.

"I'll fucking wreck you. I swear to god. If you tell anyone -"

"I wouldn't dare disrupt your street cred,"

"Come here, Parrish," he leapt off his seat and pushed him back. "Feel my wrath!"

Adam burst into a hysteric fit as Ronan punched him lightly in the chest and on the shoulders. He pushed the other boy back lightly. "Two can play at this game," he began, wrestling him playfully until his boss asked them both to continue their fight club outside before she permanently banned them from the library.

They were both still laughing like idiots as they sauntered out.

* * *

"Someone left a comment card in the suggestions box that says 'the reference librarian is a beautiful monster' and now all the reference librarians are arguing over who it's for," Adam told Blue as he ran a hand through his hair.

Blue giggled and leapt up to sit on his desk, little legs dangling; barely touching the ground.

"They were obviously talking about me," she said.

Adam narrowed his eyes. "About you? You don't even work here."

"I know, but I could easily be mistaken for a librarian. I'm always hanging around here with you, aren't I?"

"I'm sure you're right. You can be quite monstrous when you feel like it."

"I'm taking that as a compliment."

"Take it however you want but please get off the desk. If my boss sees -"

"I'll flirt my way out of trouble," she grinned.

"My boss is a _she_ ,"

Blue shrugged like it didn't really make a difference.

"You're very confident about yourself," he noted.

"I have to be," she replied, kind of cryptically.

"I should probably get going, Persephone's coming to pick me up today and I'm afraid she'll lose herself in the halls. Last week, I found her in the science lab, whispering to the frogs and then yanking open their cages whilst shouting, 'be free, little ones!' and running around in circles,"

"Your family is weird," Adam pointed out.

"Weird is better than abusive," she taunted, before quickly biting her own lip. "I'm sorry," she said, immediately. "That was uncalled for."

"No, you're right." Adam replied, his heart sinking in the tides of his chest.

"I just want you to be happy," she said, with a sigh.

"I know, Blue. I know."

"Hey," she said, brightening up. "Maybe it was Ronan who made that comment,"

"Maybe," Adam said, staring straight ahead; at anywhere but her face.

"He's hot you know," she added.

"You should date him then," Adam snapped.

"I would," she said, with a smirk. "But something tells me I'm not his type."

* * *

The most infuriating thing Ronan ever did was when he brought his drunk friend into the library just around closing time.

Adam was about to head out when Ronan burst in through the double doors hauling a hot mess of a friend with him. "Czerny is very drunk!" he stated the obvious.

Adam just stared. "Take him home then. Or to a hospital."

_Or to a zoo._

The boy - Czerny, was covered head to toe in glitter, and muttering something about penguins and margaritas in delirium, his winter-white hair fell all over his face in curly tufts and his cheeks were pale as sheets; he was practically stumbling, leaning all of his body weight on Ronan.

He looked like a train wreck.

"Are you kidding? I'm not hauling him around all over the place like a dummy," he snapped, dragging the boy over to the French Lit section and dropping him against a stack of books; in doing so, the kid almost knocked over the entire book shelf, flinging his hands up in the air and screaming. "I'm a rocketship! I'm superman! Watch me flyyyy," before bursting into a Taylor Swift song.

"Watch out," Adam said, strictly. "I swear to god you're going to clean up any messes he makes."

"Alright," Ronan agreed, much to Adam's surprise. "Let's just hope he doesn't piss himself."

Adam scrunched up his nose in disgust.

"This is Noah by the way," Ronan said calmly.

"Nice to... make your acguintrence," the boy slurred, incongruently.

Adam merely rolled his eyes.

"Why did you bring him here?"

Ronan shrugged. "I didn't know where else to go."

"I swear to fucking god, Lynch."

Ronan broke into an innocent smile. "Will you stay and help me with him?"

Adam didn't have to work at the garage today, and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to resist that look on Ronan's face. Not to mention, he would be very fired if Noah puked up his intestines smack in the middle of the library.

He decided to stay.

* * *

Noah had passed out in the shelves and Ronan was seated on one of the bean bags concentrating on a book.

Adam slid in next to him and tried not to explode at the sudden warmth that spread through his stomach with his arm brushing against Ronan's.

"What does this mean?" Ronan asked quietly, pointing to something in his book.

Adam began to explain.

* * *

Ronan couldn't pay any attention to his words.

He was staring.

Adam's hair was falling into his face as he spoke, and he was tracing the words of the paragraph he was reading out, Ronan was watching his long slender, beautiful fingers, observing how they were all calloused and worn like wrinkly paper but in a magical sort of way, he figured nobody else at Aglionby had hands so calloused, because none of them had ever worked a day in their lives. Adam was different. Adam was... earthly; warm.

Adam was frighteningly human.

Ronan then fell into a trance, watching the light freckles that sprinkled his face, they were marked like constellation points. His cheek bones were sharp and he had a jawline Ronan wanted to trace the edges of with a feather quill. Adam was beautiful; but strangely so, in the way that a summer storm was beautiful, in the way that an alien was beautiful, in the way that a world map was beautiful.

He was thinking:

_Fuck, I'm thinking about him and I can't stop. I hate myself for not being able to stop._

_Fuck, I want to swallow him whole._

_Fuck, I can't feel my feet I swear I can't I need to call an ambulance or someone to slap some sense back into me._

When Ronan tuned back into what he was saying, his nerves were beginning to burn away one by one. Adam's voice was soft and warm; like honey, but also slightly rough and raspy.

Everything about Adam made Ronan want to punch himself in the face, tear apart his own skin, burn the world to the ground.

* * *

He'd never thought about his sexuality.

Growing up, he'd mostly fallen for girls, but he'd never denied finding boys attractive.

He wouldn't beat himself up over it, if he did happen to like boys. He was already at war with too much and it was exhausting. It didn't really matter to him that Ronan was a boy, it didn't really matter to him at all. He didn't see Ronan and think boy, he saw Ronan and thought atomic bomb, bleeding out on the carpet, broken teeth.

He saw Ronan and thought of beautiful tragedies.

Ronan was the prettiest person Adam had ever met. Not pretty in the way Blue was pretty, like a sunset or a candlelit portrait. He was pretty in all the ways he tried not to be. He was pretty with his shaved head and back tattoo (which Adam had noticed curling around the nape of his neck), he was pretty with his murky clothes and his snake-like charm.

Ronan was dark and swarming and beautiful, and he made Adam want to _scream_.

* * *

The proximity was driving them both insane.

They were both staring up at each other now, unable to concentrate.

Ronan gulped, a little afraid Adam could hear his thoughts, could feel his heart dancing in his chest madly. "Why did you help me that day?"

"I was just being nice," Adam replied, softly.

"You really got that much time on your hands, Parrish? Writing me all those little notes?"

Adam's face looked like it was going to melt off, but then he took a deep breath and relaxed.

Ronan pretended like the sound of Adam's breath didn't make his stomach crawl.

"I'd already finished all three of those books so I was well-versed with your portion. I heard you might get kicked out and I guess I didn't want you to."

"Why?" Ronan stared hard.

"I don't know," Adam replied, honestly.

"Can I ask you something?" Ronan muttered, cursing himself in his head to shut the fuck up.

"Sure," Adam replied, carefully.

"Is Blue Sargent your girlfriend?"

"No," he said.

"Oh,"

"Why?"

"I don't know," Ronan replied, honestly.

* * *

Adam and Ronan were kissing and they had been for twenty minutes.

Ronan was tracing the edges of Adam's ears and pressing his lips to his chin, his eyebrows, his collarbones, Ronan had his fists in Adam's hair and Adam was kissing Ronan like the world was going to end in a minute and they didn't have much time and weeks of pent up feelings were spilling out like a champagne bottle popped open.

It was strange and it was new and it was wonderful.

It was wild and it was consuming and all Adam could do was swear.

"Fuck," Adam said. "Fuck, fuck."

 _"In perpetuum et unum diem,_ " Ronan said.

Adam didn't understand, but he had a feeling he wasn't meant to.

When they let their swollen lips part, their foreheads pressed up against each other, their breaths heavy and shaky, they were amazed that the world hadn't imploded.

* * *

Adam couldn't wipe the smile off his face as he walked home that night.

Yes, he was returning home, back to his prison; but after kissing Ronan, which had felt like the start of a new era, which had felt like a revival that began in his very bones, he felt something he hadn't felt in the longest time. He felt hope.

So he stopped by Nino's on his way back.


	2. Cut Up Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam felt hazy as soon as he stepped foot inside the church, as if he’d been touched by a dream. The boy’s gaze fell on Ronan’s back and his stomach turned. _Close enough._
> 
> (or that one where Ronan's drunk and Adam's forced to babysit).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: horror/gore/mentions and descriptions of abuse/homophobia & adult language.

_In a field. With the moon.  
_ _And the dark. And the dirt.  
_ _With your mouth. And just one word:  
_ _god god god._

_\- Daphne Gottlieb  
_

* * *

Ronan had dreamt about it happening so many times that he'd ultimately lost count.

Ronan's dreams were... a jigsaw puzzle of contradictory things; a dichotomy of the wonderful and the purely evil. It was just something he'd learnt to accept, something he'd grown into like a pair of new shoes. Every night was a coin toss, a box of sorted chocolates; he'd never know what flavor until he popped one in his mouth.

Of course his dreams didn’t _pop_ so much as slam, hurtle and foment.

Sometimes his eyes would close and he could feel himself floating outside of his body, he could feel himself transcending into a netherrealm where reality bled into his dreams and nothing made sense but everything did. It was like having a bird’s eye view of your own brain, which was a lot worse than it sounded considering his brain was a dark, twisted planet. 

He’d meet the stars halfway or trip on the caustic embroidery of the sea. He’d chase ghost cars across empty highways or get lost in a forest full of hoofed children.

Sometimes he would dream of a terrifying creature out for his blood, with teeth sharpened spikes and eyes pure oblivion. Sometimes he would dream and it was like staring into death's grotesque face. Sometimes he would dream about a person who he no longer recognized, a life that he no longer lead, all boxed up like one big bouquet of terrors in a strangely familiar setting.

What some people would term as nostalgic, Ronan would just call _fucking torturous._

Seeing the ghosts of his parents, happy, warm, yet untouched by the demonic parasites that would latch onto their family and burn it to the ground. Seeing Declan chasing after Matthew beneath the summer sun, himself with a head full of hair and eyes still hopeful, before he was chiseled by the cruel knife of his newfangled and vicious reality. Before the freight train that was his father's death truly hit him, before it knocked the air out of him.

There were times however, that he would dream of a beautiful boy, a secret, some angel's reverie.

Those were the only times that he was thankful for his dreams; when his dreams became something a whole lot more concrete and hallowed and mad than the waking world.

Waking up from those dreams; it was like waking up with little bits of heaven drizzling out of his lips.

He wouldn't tell, he'd _never_ tell; especially because he didn't want Adam to feel uncomfortable.

Even if a part of him felt like Adam already knew; he wouldn't dare address it, and make it into a _thing_.

Adam had already dealt with enough inopportune crap to last seven lifetimes, Adam had already established that the only thing that could make him truly happy was being his own man and conquering the world and reveling in the artifact of his own accomplishments, built on his own blood and sweat and hard work.

The last thing Ronan would do was be obvious and make things _awkward_ . The last thing Ronan would do was ruin what they had, which admittedly, wasn't perfect, but it was something else, something better. It was… _quiet_ . That was the best way he could term it.  
  
Initially, when Gansey had introduced this new chess piece into the deadly game that had become their lives ever since Ronan had jumped aboard the _Yay Let’s Dig For A Dead Ancient King!_ train, Adam had felt like a threat, like the fly in his milk. Ronan didn’t have space in his life to fit this new puzzle piece into, and he found himself growing jealous of Gansey and Adam’s rapidly forming bond, found new ways to kill himself, found himself lost and furious.  
  
It was fine, though, because Adam felt likewise. He took longer to warm up to Ronan than Ronan to him. He was volatile and flammable, going off everytime Ronan opened his mouth or made a taunting or snarky comment. Ronan would offhandedly mutter about how scruffy Adam’s boots looked and he would take offense like he’d tailored the goddamn things himself. Adam would call Ronan out every time he missed a class and jokingly asked Adam for his notes.  
  
“Some people actually have _goals_ in life,” he’d say. “And we don’t get where we want to go by jacking off on other people’s efforts.” After which Ronan would promptly ask Adam to go fuck himself.  
  
Once, Noah had joked to Ronan that he was the ‘Anti-Parrish’, and that’s what it had felt like for the longest time, like Ronan was everything that he was not.  
  
It became a sort of charade, and there were days Gansey was afraid of leaving the two of them alone in the same space together for _five_ minutes. “It makes sense that the two of you don’t quite get along,” which was modest Gansey speak for _I hundred percent understand why you want to have each other’s guts for breakfast._ “He’s very…”  
  
“Pathetic? Intolerant? Self-righteous?” Ronan would spit, with venom coating every drawled out word.  
  
“Are we self-projecting again?” Gansey had snapped.  
  
Ronan had almost exploded at that, but he also couldn’t help but be secretly proud of Gansey for having the balls to snipe at him like that. Eventually, Ronan had adjusted to Adam just like he adjusted to everything. Eventually, Adam’s presence became a perennial fact rather than an open question, and somewhere in between the mutual loathing and the diffident tolerance they’d begun to build a precarious friendship; and somewhere between that wobbly construction site and his heart, he’d discovered that he’d grown feelings for Adam.  
  
It had been the strangest thing, like he’d found a secret passageway that led deeper into himself.  
  
The more he understood the fragile, miraculous thing that was Adam Parrish, the more he fell in love with him.  
  
There had certainly been a time when the two of them together promised a remorseless calamity, but after having spent so much time together in between the Greenmantle case and Adam helping Ronan with his sleeping dreams, things had become better, calmer, smoother. Plus, with all these portentous things looming, they had enough to worry about without having to get all up in each other's business every time someone did or said something that the other did not approve of.

It was still something.

It was still a relationship, fractured as it was.

The others always rolled their eyes because it was just Adam and Ronan being Adam and Ronan, it was just two people who were at least on the surface; polar opposites - and not in that bullshit romanticized way which meant they were made for each other or something insufferably cheesy like that, but a bizarre combination; like ketchup and Maple syrup; perfectly edible on their own but _combined_ , just leaving an awful taste in the mouth.

Not to mention Adam Parrish seemed to like _girls_ , and Ronan wasn't one to talk about his sexuality openly. Not because he was ashamed… _Maybe_ because he was ashamed? He wasn’t familiar with that part of himself. Being a master of secrets also unfortunately entailed keeping a shit ton of them from yourself.

They had bigger concerns than his stupid conundrum anyway, they had a dead king to awaken, and with Persephone's death still looming over them all like a tidal wave suspended in time, and the arrival of the peculiar Gwenllian, who claimed to be Glendower's _freaking_ sister, and his ongoing and incessant struggle to wake up his father's dreams and prevent Matthew from meeting the same fate as their mother, Ronan had plenty of concerns to keep himself occupied; distracted.

But no matter how much self control he'd learned to master; sometimes, he still slipped.

That night, he slipped.

It was the night there was a cosmic shift in their world, two strange planets aligning for the first time. The night something between Adam and Ronan changed; perhaps irreversibly; or at least, he hoped so.

* * *

 Adam knew something was up when he received a call from Gansey at one-thirty am in the morning.

He felt every nerve in his body tense up as he scrambled to pick up the phone, leaning over the edge of his bed and balancing on his stomach to grab the phone from his nightstand; which in turn sent the heaps of papers sprawled out on his bed flying everywhere.

Adam groaned softly, it seemed as if his workload would keep up the upsurge, even if it was a task as menial as picking up a clutter of scattered papers.

Sometimes, the smallness of Adam's apartment truly aggravated him; it made his gut burn with envy when he thought of the roomy fortress that was Monmouth. Only it didn't matter, he told himself. This apartment was the fruit of his own hard-earned money and nobody else's. This apartment was proof that he was independent, that he didn't need the likes of Robert Parrish or Richard Gansey the Third or Anyone Else to keep himself stable.

Hell, this apartment _was_ Adam Parrish; compact, resolute and a little bit all over the place; irrevocably coarse around the edges and yet striving to fire on all cylinders.

Despite its size, it made up for everything that he needed; and that was why he was so fond of it.

Maybe someday, he'd open his eyes every morning to a large, tiered chandelier on the ceiling, cashmere carpets and a mansion in the Hamptons with a bathroom the size of the church office.

"What is it?" Adam said, instead of hello. "Is everything okay?"

"Well, pragmatically, yes. Nobody is dead or fatally sick or kidnapped. Relatively, no. I'm at my parents' for the night as you are well aware, Noah's MIA as usual and Blue's still... grieving."

He pretended like he didn't hear the slight tremor in his friend's voice towards the end. It usually only took less than one second for Gansey to strap his suave facade back on.

"Right," Adam had a lump in his throat with Ronan Lynch's name on it.

He had a feeling he knew where this conversation was headed.

He sighed when there was a predictable silence at the other end of the line.

“What about Lynch?" he asked, despite himself.

"I'm worried about him. He won't pick up any of my calls, it keeps directing me to voicemail. I tried Declan, he said Ronan must be off somewhere quote getting pissed unquote. I'm afraid they fought again,"

"I thought Declan's in D.C," Adam muttered thoughtfully.

"And yesterday was Sunday," Gansey said, in way of explanation.

For a moment, Adam was confused; and then he connected the dots. Declan had gone off to college, but he still made it a point to drive to Henrietta for church every Sunday, lest he broke the ritualistic custom between the brothers - the only one they still religiously maintained.

"You need me to go find him, pick him up and take him home."

"Yes," Gansey wasn't stupid, he could sense the resistance in Adam's voice. "You know I would handle the situation myself if I could."

"I know," Adam sighed. "I'm just cramming for this test and now I’m supposed to go babysit Ronan. I really can't handle him like you do."

"Ronan will listen to you," Gansey seemed resolute in his conclusion. "Just find him?"

"Where do I look?"

"The usual suspects. The Barns, Nino's, that back alleys of all the dingy bars where the drag races take place,”  
  
"Okay,"

"And Adam,"

"Yeah?"

"Stay over at Monmouth tonight when you eventually find him. Just to make sure he... doesn’t wander off his leash."

"What? No, I -"

"This is being practical, Adam. You can't leave a drunken Ronan all by himself, now can you? It's just one night and it's for his well-being and the well-being of others around him. _Please_ ,"

"But -"

"This isn't about you, Adam. You know that.”

_Swallow your pride swallow your pride._

He corked the faucet of negative thoughts that could've followed and heaved another sigh.

Gansey was using his this-sounds-like-a-request-but-it's-just-a-well-camouflaged-command voice. At the end of the day, Adam would crawl to the earth's very core for Richard Gansey, so he muttered a reluctant agreement.

"Fine," he said. "Anything else on your wishlist?”

He hadn't meant to sound bitter, it'd just come out like that.

He could practically see Gansey's disappointed frown. "No, that would be all. Just uh, let me know when you find him and inform me of his condition."

"Will do," Adam said. "Sorry," he added quickly; just to get it over with.

"Thank you, Adam." Gansey said, in that impossible tone of voice that managed to be both tense and polite at the same time. “But I’m warning you, I’m abandoning ship if he’s at some racers only red light district,” it was a joke, but Gansey made a curious sound. “Does Henrietta even _have_ a red light district?”  
  
“Let’s keep our fingers crossed I don’t find out tonight.”  
  
"Alright. I've gotta go, I think I hear mother and Helen fighting again. I don't understand what they could possibly be arguing about at this hour of day, then again in hindsight, the two of them _are_ always an ongoing battle. Goodbye."

"Later."

Adam clicked 'END CALL' and tossed his phone on his bed; leaning back momentarily and staring up at the rickety rotating fan on his ceiling before quickly changing his t-shirt and grabbing the keys to the tri-colored shit storm that was his car.

He felt disgruntled leaving his apartment in such a mess, but he could clean up in the morning.  
  
Adam actually felt a little sorry for Gansey (which was definitely a first because he was so used to it always being the other way around), but he truly did. Ever since they’d once discovered Ronan in a pool of his own blood after he’d mysteriously disappeared just as he ostensibly had tonight, Gansey had been distressed for days.  
  
Adam would never understand that part of Gansey, the one that automatically claimed responsibility for the wellbeing of every individual he ever happened upon, perhaps it was because he envied and maybe even admired it.

Right now, he had to find Ronan before he drank himself to death or casually walked out in front of a car or participated in another dangerous street race.

Sometimes, Adam couldn't help but think about how Ronan Lynch was such a fucking pain in the ass. If he could just learn to take care of himself instead of being the selfish self-pitying prick that he was… Plus after everything - _everything_ , they'd all been through he was still more or less; making the same mistakes and it wasn't fair to anyone, especially not to himself.  

He boarded the Hondayota and yanked the keys in; the engine whirred to life and he hit the gas pedal. He loathed this awful car, he loathed that it was technically a gift from the Ganseys, yet another tragic reminder of his pitiable state _. Shut up, Adam. At least you have a car_. He reminded himself to gulp down the negativity. There were, as usual, more pressing matters at hand than his mental state which was and would forever remain; jumbled.

He decided that the first place he would try his luck at was the Barns, Ronan had been skipping off to the Barns quite often ever since he'd revealed his grand plan to help his brother and wake the sleeping kingdom that was Niall's farmhouse.

Henrietta was a dark, brooding planet at night.

The neckline of the blue hills creased up like the jaws of some ancient beast, the streets were often caked in a frosting of fog and most of the homes that lined the neighborhood became barren, lightless boxes.

There was something lonesome about the town as dusk took over; and it endeared Adam. He'd never been much for the light anyway, and sometimes, the darkness was a black blanket of comfort. It made him feel larger than himself, especially with Cabeswater roaring in his pulse and the moon full in the sky.

He'd once read in the paper that the moon appeared larger in Henrietta than anywhere else in the world, perhaps it was because of the mystic pull the town had; or the unadulterated strength of the ley lines here that transcended any other part of the world.

Either way, it was incredibly conspicuous now that the tale was true as it hung large and drowsy over the heavy-eyed town; a sleeping giant in the sky.

Adam had only ever been to the Barns before with Ronan in toe; and it had only ever been during the day. The Barns at night was a world of its own, everything haunting and paralyzed like a frozen stream. There was so much history here, the air was thick with it. The wind rustled the leaves of dark moaning trees and they whistled glumly; like funeral hymns.

Adam parked the car carefully in the narrow driveway and stepped out. When he shut the car door, it rung louder than it should have.

Everything was so silent here; he was overly aware of his own sounds, his breathing, his rasping heartbeat, the crunching of his shoes against the gravel.

The tangle of twisted trees that looked merely artistic in the day, looked like they were attempting to strangle one another at night. The dense canopies of poison ivy and blood-spikes of raspberry vines obstructed most of the moonlight, plunging Adam into a shadowy world.

The opaque forest's mouth opened up into vast, unbolted fields. All the plants and bushes and flowers became silvery silhouettes, catching some of the moon's light. The three-eyed mountains half-hidden behind the tree line watched him as he watched them.

Stepping into the Barns always felt like stepping into a graveyard. It was all shivers running up your spine and a drop in the temperature.

It was standing in an invisible ocean of melancholy.

This was a place where tragedies filled the nooks and corners like termites.

Adam could almost picture all the spectres; Ronan as a kid, with his brothers and his happy and loving parents, running wild around these warm summery fields, petting the cattle, playing football in the foothills, laughing a whirlwind.

Gansey always talked about a Ronan who was a stranger to Adam, the Ronan who'd existed pre-Niall's untimely death, the Ronan with the thick curly hair and the hearty laugh and warm smile that actually reached his eyes.

The only Ronan that Adam knew was a natural disaster of a boy, chiseled like a knife's edge with molten eyes that held catastrophes.

The picture of this happy kid, this blissful family that would one day come apart at the seams; forever destroyed and never to be the same again; dropped a bomb of sorrow in the pit of Adam's stomach.

It was the childhood he'd always longed for, the childhood he'd never had living under the gruesome dictatorship of Robert Parrish, under his bloodied thumb and his mother's kind and useless concern; his mother who was complaint to her husband's abuse, who washed the bloodstains out of his shirts and asked him to _quit instigating him_ and told him _you'll listen to me if you know what's good for you_ and _close your mouth more_ and _don't look him in the eye you know how that infuriates him_ and _don't walk like this_ and _don't talk like that._

It was all bullshit, of course, Robert Parrish didn't need reasons to beat his son. He just did it whenever he was bored and itching for a fight, whenever his fingers itched and he needed to let loose. Robert Parrish had turned Adam's stomach into a snake pit, spitting venom at his bellowing call, he'd turned his life into a prison, equipped with steel bars.

_Foolish child, get up and fight! Touch me again, and I'll end your life! Lowly coward, loser - Dog! who pays the bills around here? Get me another beer, and stop crying like a little bitch, how dare you speak to me like that in my house?_

He pushed the harrowing memories away, swallowing down a lump in his throat like cement.

No matter how far he got away from his grim past, he would never get far enough.

Despite his terrible childhood however, Adam had never known what it was like to have an unbroken family, a family at all, really. It must have been worse for Ronan, to have been bred in sunlight and then be hurled right out of it.  
  
At least Adam was familiar with the dark, familiar enough to build a makeshift home out of it. One that almost felt congenial after all these years wading in it. Ronan had gotten the chance to live in the realm of light and then his lights had been swallowed.

Adam kept walking; until he recognized the dreamed up blue flower that ran amok through the grass on the other side. Everything wild and raw was here. Just like the Lynches.

Finally, he found Ronan's BMW curled sloppily into the gravel parking area in front of the white farmhouse.

Of course this was where he would find him.

Adam spotted a silhouette lying in the field on its back, a pillar of darkness in the heart of emerald pastures. He took a deep breath and strolled over. Instead of chiding the other boy, or even announcing his appearance, he crouched down and stretched out in the damp grass next to Ronan.

There was an emptied six-pack sitting in between them.

Ronan had been drinking alright. Adam almost said something, and then he didn’t. His heart felt heavy but he wasn’t sure with what.

The grass tickled Adam's skin like blown kisses, which felt nice and consoling, kind of like Cabeswater calling out to him, stretching to reach him.  
  
Except for the fact that Cabeswater sometimes preferred to use more vicious means of communication.

Adam felt one with the earth, with the trees and the dirt.

He recognized his place in between all the placelessness.

* * *

Ronan Lynch suddenly felt his entire body go stiff as if he'd been held at gunpoint.

Even in his clouded state, he was ever-aware of the boy who'd plopped down beside him. They weren't even close enough to touch, and the empty beer cans separated them, but he still felt all of his bones begin to stir like moths to light.

He waited for Adam to say something. He didn't.

He merely wrung an arm under his head and stared up at the sky instead.

"I swear to fucking god Gansey boy's got a sixth sense," Ronan spoke, silence wasn't his strong suit, and he was, admittedly, a little buzzed from all the beer. His mind was running around in circles, chasing its own tail.

Ronan wasn't sure if the stars he was seeing were because of the night sky or because of the alcohol or because of the magic boy next to him. He wasn’t sure it mattered. Not much did, these days.

"You weren't replying to any of his calls or texts," Adam said, matter-of-factly.

"Do you know how many times he checks up on me in a day? He's... He's like an overprotective mother or something," Ronan said, his words slurring slightly, but not by much. If there was one thing he'd learned drinking himself numb on a regular basis was how to handle his liquor. “Are you okay? Where are you? Now don’t you down too much alcohol, darlin’, you know how that stuff’s not good for you,” Ronan mocked, doing a fairly bad impression of a motherly voice.  
  
"Whose mom even talks like that?" Ronan didn't pay Adam's comment any heed, and huffed his response like a bull.

"Maybe you should learn to make your indiscretions less obvious," Adam suggested frankly.

"Maybe Gansey should learn how to leave me the fuck alone," Ronan snarled, biting his lower lip. Adam sighed next to him, Ronan gulped.

"What were you even doing?" Adam asked. "Asides from trying to piss yourself?" he added, scrunching up his nose and gesturing towards the string of crushed beer cans.

"None of your damn business, Parrish," Ronan replied, his gaze darted towards the other boy without his brain's permission.

Sometimes Adam made Ronan want to burn himself alive.

Adam, who always belittled himself, who looked in the mirror and saw the words scrawled in mud: _not good enough_ and _ordinary_ and _a lost cause_. Adam, with his hair like summer-warmed sand and Adam, with his sea-salt eyes and surround sound laughter.

Adam, real and earthly and warm.

Adam, his best-kept secret.

Adam didn't even get annoyed, or blast off into another argument. He merely breathed out, not quite like a sigh, but like he was beat and he'd rather just stare at the sky than get tangled into yet another web of superfluous quibbles with Ronan.

"I'm here to take you back to Monmouth," he said, softly. "Whenever you're ready."

Ronan turned away. "Just leave," he said, half-heartedly.

"Okay," Adam replied. "What do I tell Gansey?"  
  
"To stop trying to micro-manage the whole world."  Adam rolled his eyes. "You can't ask Gansey to stop being Gansey,"

"He can't ask me to stop being myself then either,"

"Is _this_ really you?"

Ronan felt still once more. He was sure his limbs were turning to stone. His chest stirred with little erupting fires. "Just leave," he repeated himself.

"Okay," Adam echoed.

He didn't leave.

* * *

Adam wasn't quite sure what he was doing, but he sent Gansey a quick text.

Adam: Found him. He’s PMSing again. But okay.  
  
Adam: P.S Don’t tell Blue I used the vaguely sexist lingo.  
  
Gansey: He’s in a mood again ?  
  
Adam: I can feel you worrying from across state lines. Relax, I’ve got this.  
  
Gansey: R U SURE?  
  
Adam: Actually no! He’s out of control! He’s tipping cows and taking names!  
  
Gansey: Hey, I’m only worrying because you sounded so reluctant on the phone.  
  
Adam: I’ll make sure he’s tucked into bed, okay? But I can’t control if he pees in it.  
  
Gansey: How much has he had to drink?  
  
Adam: A lot.  
  
Gansey: Fuck.  
  
Adam: Will handle it.  
  
Gansey: I appreciate it.

Adam still didn’t know what he was doing. All he knew was that he was tired, and now that he'd stepped out into the night, he didn't want to head back home to his lonely apartment; at least not just yet. All he knew was that he’d assured Gansey that he would fetch Ronan and he wasn’t going to head back empty handed. All he knew was that Ronan was proficient at pretending like everything was okay, when nothing was remotely okay. He was also proficient at pretending like he wasn't drunk when he was definitely drunk.

Adam unintentionally looked at Ronan.

Once again, Adam was reminded of how much Ronan seemed to _belong_ in these pastures, with the backdrop of the farmhouse, underneath this suburban firmament. An animal in its natural habitat, a god upon his shrine.

Even if he was sharper than the night around him, even if he had become as blurry and enigmatic and impossible to make sense of as one of his dream things himself.

His eyelashes were long and dark, so when he blinked it was a light show. His lips were pursed as if he'd been dreaming with his eyes open.

Ronan's cheekbones were sharp and bladed; but not in a way that wasn't handsome.

Adam once remembered being afraid that he would fall on Ronan and cut himself. Now he thought that even if he did fall, it would be a pleasant sting, like anti-septic to a bruise.

 _Healing_.

Just because the thought occurred to him and it was one that stuck to the sole of his shoe like gum, Adam attempted to imagine what the Ronan before him must've looked like prior to Niall's death.

Ronan, with a full head of hair and no tattoo and kinder eyes.

It felt strange. It was as if he was trying to imagine a zebra without its stripes, or a shark without its teeth.

Maybe it was an atrocious notion, but Adam thought he liked Ronan better this way. This Ronan had the eyes of a hawk; ever-alert and vigilant, this Ronan was intelligent and honest (well, mostly) and his tattoo was gorgeous and haunting and stellar as the night sky.

This Ronan made cursing sound like poetry and made his blood boil to the point of eruption.

This Ronan was a house rebuilt after being blown down by the big bad wolf.

Sometimes, Adam would wake up from a nightmare afraid that his dreams would become tangible and chase after him, and then he'd be relieved when he'd realize his demons hadn't followed him out of his head, except for the monsters he had for parents, of course.

_Ronan must feel like that all the time._

The thought made Adam's chest stir like a rustling windmill.

"Was it another night terror?" he asked.

Ronan frowned. "What? No," he frowned some more. "Stop trying to shake it out of me."

"Ha! So that means there _is_ something bothering you,"

"Of course there's something bothering me, Parrish. Life's a fucking sinking ship. We're closer to waking up this big, ancient king than we've ever been and somewhere, at this point, I just want a fucking rematch."

Adam had to admit, he wasn't expecting that.

Then again, he'd been a fool to think he'd come even close to knowing or understanding a creature as complex as Ronan Lynch. He was like a funhouse maze, or a rubrics cube; infinitely layered and mind-boggling through and through.

Adam sighed as he nodded. He was afraid too. Most of all, he was afraid of the part he played in all of this. Gansey's life. Taking Gansey's life. If that awful, awful vision he’d had in that tree was to be believed...

The fact that Gansey was going to die - and then it struck him like he'd swallowed a bolt of lightning.  _Ronan didn't know._ They all knew; but Ronan... He had no idea.

It would _break_ him.

This voice in his head was so certain about this that he felt a shudder go through him. Ronan was rebuilding his castle, a castle once already brought down; and Gansey's death would be like blowing it up with a grenade launcher.

Gansey's death would render it - _him,_  irreparable.

* * *

Ronan didn't understand what was happening.

This Adam, the one looking at him so tenderly instead of with exhaustion or annoyance or pure aversion, was one reserved for his dreams, for his quietest thoughts.

Suddenly, he got this sudden rushing feeling, a tap left open and now he couldn't stop the water from gushing everywhere. _What if I dreamt him? No, no_. Dream Adam was different. This was real. He was here. This was happening.

Dream Adam was always kissing him, and teasing him, and Dream Adam was happy and confident and he didn't spend every waking hour thinking a thousand self-depreciating thoughts.

Dream Adam looked at him and it burned a little bit of his soul every damn time.

"You look like you've just been kicked in the balls," Ronan noted, his words still slurring slightly.

The sky was beginning to blur a little above him and his head felt as if it were on a cloud.

Adam cringed slightly, but it wasn't because of the visual imagery, and Ronan could tell. He narrowed his eyes at the other boy.

"What is it, Parrish? Spit it out."

"Nothing -" Adam had many beautiful traits, lying wasn't one of them. "Really, nevermind."

Ronan would've pushed him if he was sober, dangled him out a window by his ankles like he often did to Noah until he gave it up, but he suddenly felt utterly drained of energy, as if someone had knocked all the air right out of him.

He inhaled deeply and then let it out.

Adam yawned and in doing so, stretched his arms out. His elbow brushed Ronan's leather jacket and a little bit of his t-shirt ruffled up, exposing a patch of smooth skin above his waistline. Ronan feigned his eyes. His heart whirred in his chest like an engine heating up.

Suddenly, he was on a battlefield of inappropriate thoughts. He fucking despised himself. _Stop being so disgusting stop it stop._   _This is not how it's supposed to be. This is not who you're supposed to be._

Ronan had made peace with the fact that he liked boys, even if he still hadn’t used the G word to describe himself, but he would never make peace with the boy that he'd chosen to fall for. It hurt too much. It was like someone was unloading a bucket of ice water over his head everytime he had to look at Adam for longer than three seconds.

All Ronan could think now was that being pinned here under a sky full of stars on his family property next to the boy he was in love with felt like being trapped in a torture chamber.

At least, in his dreams, he could grab Adam by the collar of his t-shirt and kiss him madly and bruisingly until the sun came up and it would be okay.

At least, in his dreams, shouting ‘I’m in goddamn love with you!’ didn't sound as stupendous as it did in reality.

At least, in his dreams, it ached less.

* * *

Ronan closed his eyes and began to hum.

The tune was melodious and dreamy; it matched the starry night sky.

He couldn’t recognize the harmony, but Adam was just glad it wasn’t the Murder Squash Song again; he would go to any lengths necessary to keep that clamorous atrocity from deafening the one good ear he had left.

“What are you singing?” he asked, despite himself. The voice of reason in his head kept chirping, reminding him that he had school the next day, and work, and Gansey.

Reminding him that he was supposed to go home and catch some sleep. Reminding him that lying down here in a farmyard under the night’s moonlit mantle was not productive in the least. Reminding him that he was not named Ronan Lynch or Richard Gansey the Third, that he was not at leisure to do as he pleased when there was a skyscraper worth of tasks at hand, that he was Adam Parrish and Adam Parrish did not have time for things that weren’t productive, for things that didn’t augment his plans for the future in any way.

For once, his brain wasn’t paying a lot of heat to what the voice of reason in his head had to say.

Perhaps it was because Adam was beginning to forget what being at peace felt like.

“It’s an ancient Irish folksong,” Ronan replied, eyes still closed, lashes flapping black and gold. "Kind of like a lullaby."

“My mother used to sing it to me when I was a kid,” he said, slightly dazed, before clearing his throat. “Of course, I couldn’t wipe my own ass back then.”

“It’s nice,” Adam muttered, without giving it much thought.

“It was nicer when she sang it,” Ronan replied. “Dad used to say that she had the most beautiful voice in the world, that even a simple recording of her singing in the shower could blow all those punks on American Idol right out of the sky.”

Ronan sighed, resting his head under his arm and tugging at his lower lip with his teeth, white gashes in the murky light. He looked stranger than a constellation and darker than any raven in the night’s dull blue glow.

“There was just something about her voice, you know? It was soothing and warm, like an angel whispering to you, like stars falling.”

Adam couldn’t help but nod his head in recognition, not because he knew what Aurora Lynch sounded like, but because her son had inherited that captivating, musical allegro of voice. It was like listening to somebody describe their own characteristics without even realising it.

Ronan certainly had his mother’s gift. He could turn into a breathing poem when he was humming softly, or cursing violently.

Ronan cleared his throat once more, his cheeks holding slightly more color than usual. “Fucking _shit_. I’m out of beer.”

Adam rolled his eyes.

Ronan Lynch wouldn’t allow himself to be gentle for longer than a few subconscious seconds, it was against his very being, against his precious metal-core loving, leather-jacket wearing; dirty-mouthed street cred. Against the mask of mundanity that he wore everywhere he went.  
  
Adam thought that he tried too hard to fit into that one particular category of people so that if you were to just happen upon him on the street one day your mind would compartmentalize and dismiss him into the archetype he presented himself to be.

“And you’re not getting any more. It’s late. We should leave.” Adam said, with a sigh, after glancing at his wrist to check for the time and realizing that he’d forgotten to put his watch on before leaving his apartment. It was a cheap watch, plain and simply crafted, not all sleek and gold-plated like one of Gansey’s rolexes. It was his only watch.

“Do you always have to be such a tight ass?” Ronan grumbled.

“What did you say to me?” Adam cocked an eyebrow.

“I said tight ass. T-I-G-H-T-A-S-S.” He snapped, spelling it out for him and surprisingly getting the spelling right, for a guy who was seemingly drunk out of his mind, anyway.

“Yes. I do.” Adam replied, his mouth a straight line.

It angered Adam, but he bit it down. Most times, Adam’s anger couldn’t be capped down; most times his anger was an entity of its own, like a possession, or fifty attack dogs at once all off their leashes; a gestational gift from daddy dearest, one that made his already insufferable life even more so.

In the moment however, he simply didn’t have the energy to get into another hopeless fight with Ronan Lynch. Especially not when one party barely had his wits about him.

“Why?”

“You know why.

“Oh. _Right_ , right. Because you’re Adam fucking Parrish and you’re intellectually above us all because you’ve scrubbed the crap infested floors of your trailer and taken out the trash more than once and we’re all rich spoiled brainless monkeys worshipping patriarchy and choking on shrimp cocktails.”

“Yes, that’s _exactly_ why. Now get the fuck up and let’s go or I’m going to leave you here to rot away.” Adam snapped, something in his chest quaking silently, making him rethink exhausting his anger.

Ronan frowned, the alteration in his expression as swift as a blink. “I’m sorry,”

Ronan Lynch would never have apologized, nor would he have said anything that mandated an apology in the first place, if he hadn’t been wasted. Adam reminded himself of that as the churning in his gut dissipated.

“It’s fine. You know, _somebody’s_ got to be the sensible one.”

“We have Maggot for that. And let’s be honest, sensibility isn’t attractive. Unless you’re Gansey, then it’s _incredibly_ attractive. Whoa, I think I just figured out why Gansey’s so into her.”

“Congratulations on the deduction, Sherlock. Now let’s get a move on.” Adam said, sitting up and dusting his jeans off.

Ronan remained on the ground as Adam stood, so he sighed and held out a hand for his friend to take. Ronan stared at Adam’s extended arm for a moment before grabbing on to it limply. He didn’t look like he had the energy to sit up straight, let alone trudge through the shrubbery all the way back to his car.   

His arms hung loose as cracked branches against Adam’s. His skin was warm in juxtaposition to Adam’s cold fingers.

Adam sighed. “You know, at least babysitters get paid for their manual labor. I get the pleasure of painstakingly lugging you around all for free.” He said, as he crouched down to pull Ronan up and keep him from crumbling back into a heap on the floor.

* * *

Ronan had realized three things as soon as he’d stood up:

1\. He was a lot drunker than he’d initially assumed  
  
2\. Adam Parrish smelt like a fucking _carnival_ ; all sweetness and soap.  
  
3\. A disapproving voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Gansey’s kept chiding him on repeat like a broken recorder. Y _ou’ve made a mess go home look now you’ve dragged Adam into this he looks so tired he always looks tired and it’s probably your fault._

Adam wrapped Ronan’s left arm around his neck and his own across Ronan’s waist to keep him steady. Ronan wasn’t intentionally leaning all of his bodyweight on the other boy, but his limbs felt like they were made out of jelly and his vision was a blur of dark jades and blinding blues.

The dark jades being the encircling forest and the blinding blues being Adam’s seemingly bioluminescent eyes.

Ronan would never understand how Adam had deemed himself ugly and plain when he had eyes that could probably electrocute at the right proximity.

“You’re a lot heavier than you look,” Adam grumbled.

“I lift,” Ronan muttered, smugly.

“If only you could lift yourself all the way back to the car, then maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about us tumbling down the hill like Jack and Jill.”

“You’re funny when you aren’t imitating the Grinch who stole Christmas, you know that?” Ronan mumbled.

“Ha-ha,” Adam said dryly, unamused.

“How far is the shit box?” Ronan asked.

“Just past the forest. You know… the Barns feel like a labyrinth.”

“We can just take the BMW,”

“I’m not leaving my car here. _I_ actually plan on attending school tomorrow. Do you? Wait, don’t answer that, you’ll probably be hungover.”

“I don’t _do_ hangovers,” Ronan replied, intellectually.

“Of course,” Adam rolled his eyes as he struggled to haul his friend through the dark shapeless forest. Trees drenched in darkness always managed to make him incredibly uncomfortable; they turned into black, shifty creatures at night; faceless and vicious.

“Hangovers fear me. They flee in terror.” Ronan continued to blither; the invisible filter that kept all of his wolves on a leash disappeared whenever he’d had too much to drink. Adam bit down on his tongue to keep from a weary laugh.

As they kept going, the shrubbery began to thin out and the moon emerged from behind a fresco of branches, steely in it’s splashing light on Adam’s face and hair, making him appear silvery like an actual magician from a fairytale.

Sometimes, Ronan thought, Adam’s beauty was a warped beauty. The gaunt lines of his face, the sunken ridges of his mighty cheekbones, his dusty eyebrows and defined jawline, all stringing together to draw an orphan boy from one of those Victorian paintings his father liked to hang around, charming and yet forlorn. And an almost apocalyptic deadness in the light waters of his eyes. Ronan thought Adam and thought dead flowers, dusty church benches, warm Virginian summers.

Ronan found the sudden need to bite his lip. Hard. Maybe until he drew blood.

“Alright, Mr. Invincible. We’re almost there,” Adam said, tiredly.

“If towing me around is so exhausting for you then maybe you should just go home. I’ve driven drunk before, I can do it again.”

“Yeah, so that Gansey can pounce on me? I don’t think so.”

“That’s why you’re doing this, right? Because you’re afraid Gansey will pounce on your ass. I’ll personally request him not to. There. Problem solved. You can leave me alone if you want.”

“I am _not_ afraid of Gansey.” There was this sudden, alien edge to his voice. It reverberated like thunderous clouds.

Adam stared at Ronan for a pregnant moment, his expression unreadable. Ronan stared back, but this time, it wasn’t because he was admiring the boy’s beauty. He stared him down with one of his famous deadly stares that he was willing to bet fifty bucks could unnerve the very likes of Hitler if he was still alive.  
  
Adam was a different animal with half his face lit up in the moonlight and the other half a playground for shadows, he suddenly bore a painful resemblance to the monstrous Adam from one of his nightmares.

The Adam whose face Ronan had ripped off along with that ghastly mask. Ronan felt his heart speed up in his chest like electro-convulsive. Dread pooled in his gut, acrid and stinging as lava.

Ronan felt as though Adam was waging some kind of internal war. Of course, Adam was _always_ at war with himself, it wasn’t a new development. He should’ve seen this coming.  _Stupid no filter drunk brain_ , he cursed himself internally, this time using longer, harsher, more compound curses, both in Latin and English. “I didn’t mean it like that,” Ronan finally said, with a submissive huff.

“I’m not doing it just for Gansey,” Adam finally said, with a sigh, his shoulders falling. He’d chosen to let go of his anger. Ronan pushed his front teeth deeper into the soft, bruised flesh of his bottom lip. For a millisecond, he almost thought Adam would say something, and then Adam looked away, pressing his lips back together. “I’m not letting you drive drunk, for the sake of your life and any poor bastard who happens to be in your way.”

“So very thoughtful of you,” Ronan spat.

“Stop taunting me, okay? Just _stop_.”

“Why? You gonna lash out at me?”

Adam pressed his thumbs into his eyes, huffing out a quick breath. Ronan watched his chest rise and fall. “I know when you’re trying to provoke me, Lynch. You’re drunk and acting out. I’m taking you home, but if you keep acting the way you are right now, I won’t hesitate to knock you out. You don’t need to be conscious to be dragged back to Monmouth.”

Ronan opened his mouth, and then closed it.

_Don’t fight with him, not when he’s doused in gasoline and so easily flammable._

Ronan bit his own anger down. There was a part of him that was discombobulated, absolutely unsure of where his own indignation had sprung from. It was like strolling through a sunless boardwalk blind, when the dark meets more dark there’s no inkling of light. 

They kept going, both boys silent now, because whatever had to be said had been said, and they were both beginning to realize that sometimes, words were salt to their wounds. At least, when the words came from one of their mouths.

As they went on, something caught in Ronan’s leg, making him trip over and crash right into Adam’s chest. “Ow!” Adam yelped. Ronan cursed, using words Adam didn’t even comprehend.  
  
He really needed to look up some Latin swear words, just to make sure he wasn’t being called a swine or an asshole without his knowledge.

Ronan took a step backwards, untangling himself from the other boy – who still smelt like a _fucking bubble bath_ according to Ronan. What cologne did he use? Probably something from Forest Essentials. Adam sidestepped. “Can you walk now?”

Ronan nodded, but his vision was still awful and he was still feeling wobbly.

“Do you have night-blindness or something?”

“Only when I’m drunk,” Ronan supplied.

Adam _tsked_ loudly and grabbed the other boy’s arm again. “Come on,” he said. “And try not to trip over thin air this time?”

“It was a fucking twig I swear it,”

“Whatever you say,” Adam said, with a condescending smirk that would’ve made Ronan want to knock his teeth off if only he didn’t look so endearing whilst he did it.  
  
“You know,” Ronan drawled in a chirpy voice after a couple of minutes. “You’re like my northern star, guiding me home.”  
  
Adam laughed at this. Ronan could almost taste the unburdening lightness of it in his mouth.

* * *

Once they got to the Hondayota, Adam opened the door for a delirious Ronan, who was still being difficult. Adam couldn’t help but think about how Gansey would’ve handled the situation, how he always does in his own Gansey way. Gansey probably wouldn’t have wiped a sweat.

To be fair to him, Gansey hadn’t worked a day in his life for any of his wealth, maybe he deserved this, deserved to be on Ronan duty whenever Adam was off busting his ass at work or at school or at the library.

“You try dragging around a Ronan-sized rag doll all the way home,” Gansey had once told Adam. He’d probably done this a dozen times. Ronan seriously needed to learn how to stop being such a liability on everyone. Adam didn’t understand how Ronan could stand it, there he was, flipping his shit every time he caused somebody the slightest inconvenience, and then there was Ronan, making the whole world’s head spin every time he forgot how to tie his shoelaces.

Adam didn’t want to depend on anyone but himself, Ronan was leaking everywhere like a faucet left on, staining everybody in his self-destructive colors and he probably didn’t even realize it.

Still, Adam felt himself softening for Ronan as he helped the other boy into the car, shut the door, walked over to the driver’s side and slid in. Five minutes later, just where Adam had to make the turn that led to Monmouth, Ronan grabbed Adam’s arm. His fingers were warm against Adam’s icy skin; jarring. “What?” he said.  
  
“You wanted to know why I was so moody,” Ronan droned. “I didn’t go, Adam.”

Adam twisted in his seat just a little bit. “Are you going to expand on that explanation?”  
  
“I didn’t go to the church.”  
  
Adam huffed out another strenuous breath, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. The night outside was blue-bodied and shrill. The Hondayota smelt like pinecone car freshener and fresh gas. He turned right as planned.  
  
He wasn’t wasting precious gas money.  
  
Ronan opened one of the car’s compartments and then slammed it shut, and then he opened it again and slammed it shut again. A child throwing a tantrum, at least that’s what it sounded like, but the absolute gut-wrenching dance of his lips and the crisp weariness in his eyes pointed to something a whole lot more serious than mere petulance. He kept at the thrashing until Adam thumped the breaks at the curve of the road. “What the hell, Ronan?”  
  
“I didn’t go to the church, Adam. I – I have to go,”

Adam’s eyes widened. “ _Now?”  
  
_ “Fuck yeah,” Ronan replied, his eyes reflecting the streetlights like flames. “No way. We have to get to Monmouth. I have to sleep… Listen, I know how much going to St. Agnes every Sunday means to you, but the deed’s already done. There’s no point now. We can’t possibly –“  
  
“It’s right by your place,” Ronan said tightly. “We can crash at your apartment instead.”  
  
The lump in Adam’s throat was growing, becoming the size of a brick. “Please,” every nerve in his handsome face had frozen up. His eyes were melting, burning blue stars.  
  
It felt like a night of firsts.

Adam had never heard Ronan _plead_ before. Ronan showed only two emotions, happiness and anger, and it was usually the latter. Once in a blue moon, he’d even show resolve and apologize for something he did, but never, ever did Ronan Lynch _plead_.

“It wasn’t… It wasn’t even like I couldn’t go, you know? Like I was busy with something else? I just… I just _didn’t go._ And now, I feel like… I’ve broken something that… and everything’s fucked… nothing stays the same not even –“

“Okay,” Adam said, flushed; no heat to his reply. “Jesus, okay.”

He took a U-turn and they headed left instead, back to St. Agnes, back to Adam’s apartment.

* * *

St. Agnes was a bleary-eyed and sullen place at night.

There was always something dusky and ancient about churches after dark. They became these breathing embodiments of folklore and tragedy, prayers and musings. Ronan strolled in front of him with his hands in his pockets and his head slightly bent; not in shame, partly because Adam didn’t think a creature such as Ronan ever felt mortal trappings like shame – but with a sort of sheepish and edgy demeanor.

He still wasn’t able to walk fast, but he didn’t seem to need Adam’s assistance anymore, as if being in this holy place had leached all of the alcohol right out of his system.

Adam felt hazy as soon as he stepped foot inside the church, as if he’d been touched by a dream. The boy’s gaze fell on Ronan’s back and his stomach turned. _Close enough._

“Enchanting, isn’t it?” Ronan mumbled, quietly.

Adam wasn’t sure he thought so.

His parents had never been churchgoers like Ronan’s rather pious family. He himself wasn’t very religious; he’d grown up in a household a whole lot more vicious than any Catholic school. As Adam saw it, if you’d been raised by a demon for a parent you’d never particularly feel the need to believe in a god.   
  
He still remembered horrid nights sobbing on the cold floor of his little room at the doublewide, knees bruised, ribs bruised, fingers bleeding and shivering as he stared up at the small remorseless patch of sky that bled through the window and prayed to a god who turned a deaf ear.

_God, please help me. Send an angel or something._

_God, the beatings are getting worse and momma won’t even look me in the eye anymore and I don’t know how to make him happy I don’t I don’t I don’t._

_God, sometimes I wish I hadn’t been born._

_God_ , he rolled his eyes. There was no god. Not for Adam Parrish.

“The last time we were here I watched your doppelganger bleed to death. I don’t think that _enchanting’s_ the particular adjective I’d use.” Adam replied, because he was not going to get into an argument with Ronan Lynch about his faith. He didn’t want to demean other people’s beliefs just because he didn’t share them. “Oh,” Ronan said, thoughtfully. “That’s right."

Adam fell quiet as Ronan dipped his fingers into the holy water and touched his forehead. The remnants of which he sprinkled in Adam’s face, as he yelped and took a step back.

“That’s not funny,” Adam snapped.

Ronan merely curled his lip. “What? I was just cleansing you of your sins.”

“Ha,” is all Adam said, but he felt his spine tingle unsettlingly.

The church was as he’d left it the last time he’d been there, except a lot more shadowy than he remembered. There were still the vases of bright lilies, the reams of white cloth and the tormented gaze of Christ. It still made Adam feel dizzy and somehow lighter than his body. It still hummed at frequencies Adam was not attuned to.

Only now, it felt more sacred, more ancient, more uninviting.

Adam’s stomach lurched again. He felt like he didn’t belong here.

Ronan, on the other hand, he was at home. Or perhaps he just molded everything around him into a home, perhaps he could claim the moon if he wanted.

He shuffled up the dim-lit and narrow staircase like he’d done it a hundred times before, which to be fair, he probably had. Adam shuffled forward on Ronan’s tale, as he was lead up to the balcony that held a couple of pews and a pipe organ. At the top, the Mary statue still greeted him with her hands out and persistent. A few candles burned beneath her, others had died out and melted into frosted rivers of wax.

The statue’s face looked strangely animated in the auburn aura of the radiating firelight.

Adam looked away, gaze shifting to Ronan.

Watching Ronan at the church was strangely fascinating, like watching a tiger left loose in the wild, or a crow zipping through the sky. _What will this unpredictable, wild force do next? Nature’s prized possession as it is._

Watching Ronan anywhere that he belonged was insane, Adam liked observing how the room he was in would shift and bend to contain his fires, his seven stomachs. He liked watching this light as he attracted everything in this thirsty world to him like he had magnetic properties or something.

He liked how he didn’t know this blackbird of a boy at all.

Ronan simply sat down by the organ where his little brother sometimes practiced before closing his eyes and tilting his head slightly as if he were listening to an inaudible mass.

Adam dropped on one of the pews and sighed audibly.

“We’re here,” he said dryly. “Now what? Do you feel better?”

“Just give me five minutes, Parrish. Then baby’s day out is over.” Ronan muttered, rather self-deprecatingly.

Adam nodded, not that Ronan was paying any attention to him. He was so still and engrossed in fact, that Adam would’ve said that he was watching the other boy _pray_ if he didn’t know better.

He felt left out of the loop, as if he was watching his life like a movie at a drive-by theatre, from outside, from far away. Staring at this boy in these tender moments of silent worship, thinking thoughts that couldn’t possibly be his, thinking thoughts that belonged to the character that was a part of this movie he was witnessing unfold.

Ronan truly merged in with this cathedral. Just as shadowy and charming, just as mysterious and woeful. The temple of his body, the carved columns of his shoulders, the chancel of his chest.

Adam’s senses stirred lightly, he could smell, for a few vertiginous seconds, foliage damp from the rain and feel sunlight on his back, warm as a blanket. It wasn’t real, or perhaps it was too real. Adam wasn’t sure he was in a position to be judging unreality.

It was Cabeswater, either attempting to communicate with him, or attempting to torment him.

Adam had found that there wasn’t much of a difference between the way the sentient forest reacted to either agenda.

But it still protected him, kept him, hummed a cascade inside him.

Five minutes flew by, with Adam trapped inside his own head, sailing seas of turbulent thoughts and Ronan, doing whatever he’d come here to do, to fulfill some kind of inexplicable need or desire.

Adam felt Ronan’s shadow over his. The other boy’s expression was a puzzle Adam didn’t have any of the pieces to solve. “We can leave now,” he said. “I’m sure the school girl in you doesn’t want to get late in the morning. See, I can be considerate.”

“I think the phrase you’re searching for is _thank you,_ jackass,” Adam muttered grimly, as he stood up from where he’d been seated in the pews. He felt his entire body tingling with nervous energy, his nerves thrummed in violent disquiet. He couldn’t wait to leave this church.

“Don’t fucking swear,” Ronan muttered, rather redundantly. “We’re in a place of worship.”  
  
“Can’t fault that logic,” Adam joked.

As they began to make their way out, his unease returned, or grew.   
  
There were some places on this planet that were meant merely for gods and not men. There was a time when he’d considered himself merely man, and god was an ancient tongue Adam didn’t know how to speak. After Cabeswater, he almost felt convinced that he was neither, that he didn’t belong anywhere.

That anywhere didn’t belong to him.

 _Lonesome_ , a voice in his head hissed – no, _reminded_. Yes. That was all he was, and sometimes he feared, it was all he would ever be. A boy like a bullet, fashioned for nothing greater than it’s purpose, which was to kill, driven by the deep loathing and despair of others, of Cabeswater.

Sometimes he saw that image he’d seen, of Gansey’s dead body and the look on Ronan’s face.

The unadulterated revulsion, the same kind Adam sometimes felt burning his insides when he looked at his father.

Adam was afraid that one day he would wake up and see his father’s face staring back at him in the mirror. He had the same shape-shifting anger, the same skin crafted of dust and misfortunes, and the same tendency to let his unkempt emotions swallow the good in him whole.

But no, surely Robert Parrish had never had good in him. A man who went to war with his own family could be no more than a monster.

Or perhaps, all men were monsters, partly anyway.

Adam could see his future like murky water. They’d pry open the history books and find no trace of him, he’d leave no legacy in his wake, nobody would carve his name into old walls, build statues of his graceless body.

He would live and die as his father before him, unworthy and unloved, drowning in his own dismay, setting everything he happened upon afire.

He was the very essence of nothingness. He would never be a hero and he knew that, sometimes that terrified him so much he felt that it was better to be the villain than to be the ordinary man, the nobody.

He wasn’t going to be like Gansey, his family name holding as much power as Zeus’ thunderbolt, Gansey could live to be nothing and still earn his place in this world because he was rich, handsome, capable. He was an Aglionby Alum, he was a well maintained garden. And then there was lowly Adam, he would try, and try, cut his hands on searing car engines, break his fists against walls, sweat a gallon and still never get anywhere.

Suddenly, he lost the trail of his thoughts. Adam blinked.

Ronan was snapping his fingers in front of his face. “Are you meditating or something? I said _let’s go._ ”

“Yeah,” Adam said, mouth tasting like he’d swallowed brittle shards of glass. He imagined they were the stained church windows, depicting biblical imagery. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Ronan could sense that something was wrong as Adam struggled to pry open his apartment door. He looked frustrated, his boyish features tight as a bowstring, his eyebrows perpetually furrowed. He kept clenching and unclenching his jaw.

There were uncontained fires in him and all Ronan wanted to do was let each one out.

He wanted to run his fingers over every frown line in his face and smoothen them out until they felt light as satin. He wanted to ask what was bothering him, but Ronan Lynch wasn’t very good at expressing his feelings. Unfortunately, Adam wasn’t any better at it and would probably shut him out even if he did ask.  
  
Maybe it’d been a mistake to bring him to that church, maybe it had stirred something up. Something deeply buried inside the desultory summit that was Adam’s brain.

“Give them to me,” Ronan said coarsely. “Seriously Parrish, you’re attempting to get a key through a hole, not wrestling with Satan.”

Adam said nothing and obediently handed Ronan his apartment keys. Ronan pried it open within mere seconds. “Man,” he groaned. “Part of me was hoping it wouldn’t budge and then we could kick the door down Die-Hard style.”

“Sure,” Adam muttered, slipping into the dull confines of his sleepy apartment. “As long as you’d be paying for  _and_ installing the new door yourself.”

Ronan scoffed as he shambled in, gently shutting the door behind him. Adam’s apartment smelled like caffeine and old books, laundry detergent and trees. That was perhaps normal, ever since Adam had donated himself to Cabeswater, he always smelled mildly like a rainforest.  
  
It was endearing, really.

Dew-kissed leaves and the rich barks of trees in the blooming heat of a late suburban summer. A beautifully whimsical scent, one that refiltered his senses.

Adam’s room was a clutter, there was barely any space to walk let alone sleep. His bed was littered with sheets of papers, his trash can was full to the brim with more crumpled up papers and plastic coffee cups. Adam cringed, huffing out an exhausted sigh. “I… I didn’t get time to clean up,” he explained, he sounded pained--embarrassed. “I don’t care,” Ronan said, meaning it. He could adjust to anything, he’d even sleep on the floor if that meant getting to be in the same room with Adam all night.

“What are all these sheets?” Ronan asked, running a hand over the back of his mostly-shaven head as he peered over at the sprinkling of white that had taken over most of Parrish’s bed.

“I was studying for the test tomorrow,” Adam replied.

Ronan frowned and bit down on one of the several worn leather bands laced around his wrist. “We have a test tomorrow?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “I’ll try and… tidy up,” he said, his voice small.

“I’ll help,” Ronan offered.

Ronan waited for Adam to balk, for Adam to shake his head and say that he could handle it himself. He didn’t. He merely sighed once more, running his palms over his eyes until they watered. “I’m tired,” he finally concluded. “You can just sleep on the bed,” he said as he began to dump all the clutter off the bed.

“I’ll wake up an hour early and organize in the morning,” he added.

Ronan simply stared, almost a hundred percent convinced that he was hearing things.

“Sleep on the bed?” he asked, voice hoarse all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” Adam said, with a shrug. “I _really_ hope you’re not a kicker or a drooler.”   
  
“Huh?” was all that came out of his mouth.  
  
Adam tilted his head. “Am I speaking Mandarin or something?”

“Where will you sleep?” Ronan said, disbelief staining his words.

Adam narrowed his eyes. “Well on the ceiling, of course,”

“Huh?” he echoed.

“Upside down,” Adam muttered. “You know, because of how I’m part-bat?”

It literally took Ronan a whole minute to realize that Adam was kidding, that Adam was being sarcastic, that Adam was implying that they would both be sleeping on his bed. Like… Together. _On the same bed. Like… Together. On the same bed. ON THE SAME BED-_

Ronan thought that his heart was going to sear a hole into his chest and leap out of it. Adam. Adam and beds. That sounded like a particularly fatal combination.

Did he want Ronan dead?

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive the night, with Adam Parrish asleep and beautiful and silent merely inches away from his own body.  
  
“Asshole,” Ronan managed.  
  
Adam smiled.

One thing was for sure, there was going to be no fucking sleeping tonight.

* * *

He’d thought he’d finally reined in the wild horse that was his insomnia.

He was wrong.

The moment his head had hit the pillow, he’d been relieved, his eyes burning with the relentless need for rest. His insomnia of course, had other plans for him. Adam wasn’t surprised, really. Disappointed, perhaps, but never surprised. Sleep was just another luxury he couldn’t easily afford. Twenty minutes slipped by like water in a flood. He was so tired, but there was no rest for the wicked. His heart clenched inside his chest as he checked the time on his phone. He’d always found it rather unnecessarily to own a digital alarm clock when he lived in the age of smartphones and tablets. It was almost four am.

The night was on its hind legs, only an hour until early birds began to chirp, those lucky bastards, off to bed when the dusk poured the darkness into the sky, and back up again as soon as the sun fluttered in from the east.

How nice it must be for those birds, how wholesome. Insomnia was a phenomenon that was exclusive to the idle human, after all.

Sometimes he wished to be a species that didn’t suffer this sort of mortal coil.  
  
Adam contemplated getting up, there was always work to be done and he _did_ have an exam tomorrow. He’d begun studying two weeks prior though and he was pretty sure he was thorough with all of it. He’d revised just this evening, too. He never liked to over-work himself, especially not with subject matter that he was already familiar with. It only managed to confuse him and it undid some of the learning he’d already done. Still, he thought there had to be something to gain from sifting through his homework than staring up at the ceiling with endless loops of rattling thoughts burning his brain. If nothing else, the clutters of words in the textbooks might aid in clearing the clutter inside his head.

Momentarily, he turned to inspect the boy on the bed next to him.

He’d tried to make his mind forget that there was somebody else there and failed miserably, because it _wasn’t_ just somebody. It was Ronan, whose presence could liven up a graveyard. Of course, it was probably just because of Ronan’s bright aura, he was so raw and so real that he seemed to dim everything else around him. A part of Adam couldn’t believe that he’d let him sleep besides him. His bed was small and uncomfortable, it wasn’t really meant for two people and so they were closer than he would’ve liked for them to be, with only a lean pillow separating their bodies. Ronan was slept on his back with an arm slung loosely over his head and the other resting over his stomach. Adam’s gaze lingered. He’d never been able to sleep like that, he only ever got sleep if he was curled into a fetal position in a blanket burrito, but Ronan, even though he was an insomniac too, could probably sleep in any position if he was tired enough.

Adam studied the other boy. Ronan was a new moon in his sleep with his features all relaxed and smoothened out like silk. The perpetual frown he often wore, that rugged twist of his lips, was nowhere to be seen. The hint of aggression and inner turmoil that often swam across his features disappeared. He was gentle as a rabbit, soft as sky. Adam’s attention once again fell on the long curve of his thick lashes, on the sharp ridges of his jaw and cheekbones.  
  
His lips were parted ever-so-slightly, his chest rose and fell slowly.

Adam felt like he was in a trance.

The warm light cast from the streetlights outside washed through the thin curtains, painting his face in its brilliance. Ronan was blinking quite a bit in his sleep, and Adam knew that meant that he was dreaming. The boy was a halo in his sleep and Adam was astonished that Ronan had allowed himself to be this close and this vulnerable with Adam.

A body, to Adam, was the purest gift a person could ever give to another person. Bodies were sacred, they were personal, they were one’s own, and to let your body go besides another person was a big thing to Adam. After all, it was that thin blanket of flesh and blood that kept you alive. He was so convinced of his own automy sometimes, that he forgot how nice it felt to be close to someone else, to be able to map the shape of their hands in the dark. He’d grown up feeling like his body was a cage, a curse, a catacomb he would eventually wither away in. Adam felt a shiver shamble down his spine, his stomach turned unpleasantly. He could still feel his father’s hands on his skin. Grip like steel. Hot as exhaust pipes. His body had been punched, kicked, slammed, thrown, pushed. His body had been violated and engraved. Touch and space were sensitive concepts for Adam.

All his life he’d been touched, but not in the way that he’d wanted.

Adam had only recently been acquainted to the idea that there were other kinds of touches. Warm touches, sprinkled-like-candy touches, barely-there ghost touches, passionate touches.  
  
Perhaps not all types of touching were the bad kind.

It was with Blue that he’d first ever felt that foreign ache in his gut, a rush like a blow to the head but in a pleasant way. It was with Blue that he’d felt the urge to touch; to _be_ touched-- for the first time in his life.

He’d wanted to kiss those baby-plump lips of hers, he’d wanted to tuck her hair behind her ear and put his finger to the soft skin behind it. He’d wanted her to wrap her tiny arms around his waist and he’d wanted to bury his face in her shoulder.

Things were different now, Gansey was still hesitant to blurt the secret and that hurt Adam, but Adam wasn’t an idiot, he knew that the two of them were seeing each other in secret. He was an observant person, had always been. He was quiet and his eyes wandered and his brain whirled inside his head, thoughts always skidding and rolling and bumping up against each other like clothes in a washing machine.

He’d caught the subtle glances, the almost primal, uncontained longing in their eyes, the way sometimes, when Gansey didn’t think he or Ronan were paying them any attention, he would run his knuckles over Blue’s, just once, a quiet gesture that screamed legions. He’d seen how when they would all be in the car together, Blue would watch Gansey drive from the corner of her eye, she’d follow the motion of his hands, or the curling of his lips as he spoke and hang on every word. He’d understood, then. It couldn’t have been more obvious if the two of them had been flashing matching tattoos.

To Adam’s surprise, even though it had stung at first, he’d accepted it and maybe even gotten over it. Sometimes though, it still ached just a little bit, that Blue could see Gansey in that way and not Adam (but _of course_ it would be Gansey, did there exist a specimen who’d pick him over Gansey?)

And yes, there did. Ronan Lynch. It still intrigued Adam that this wild twister of a boy could find someone as ordinary and abysmal as Adam Parrish striking when there was Gansey to fall for, pearl-licked and printed-like-money, or even Blue for that matter, with her pixie persona and soft eyes.

Hell, Adam could come up with a list of people a whole lot more worthy of his admiration than he was. And yet… And _yet_.

Adam had learnt many things about Ronan ever since they’d begun spending time at the Barns, as Adam helped him with his sleeping kingdom and they plotted together to chase Greenmantle out of town. Ronan wasn’t all rough edges like Adam had previously thought, he knew that now.  
  
In fact he was a whimsical castle of wonders. Both dark and light.

Adam felt a familiar tug in his chest again. One that he had experienced before but which he could not name. He thought he didn’t understand something about himself-- perhaps he’d been staring for too long.  
  
_Is this_ _like Blue?_  The thought came out of nowhere, no, that wasn’t right. It had been there for quite some time now. Some small, growing part of his mind answered: _it is, but deeper._

It was, but dizzying.

He shook himself out of his trance and slowly, careful not to wake Ronan, slipped off the bed to grab his laptop and indulge himself in an academic distraction.  
  
The comfortable glow of the laptop screen awoke his sleep-heavy senses as he got to typing.

* * *

It was a strange place where he found himself.

He felt his throat knot up at the terribleness of it, at the disgusting and unshakable nostalgia of it.  
  
He was at a park that was about five minutes away from the Barns. Back when Niall Lynch was still alive, he and Aurora would take the Lynch boys to that park to play on summer evenings.  
  
This park that he was stood in was merely a ghostly callback of the childhood enigma that it had once been. The dream light was a strange sickly yellow, like the sun above them was ill. A pair of monkey bars drooped lifelessly, a merry-go-round spun all by its lonesome, screeching like a broken guitar string. The swings swung as if ghost children were pushing each other back and forth on them, but they too crooned like the coughs of an old man. Everything was rusted and dull and bled of color. It gave him that foreboding feeling that abandoned and derelict places often gave you, something like dust settling in the gut and your mouth drying up.  
  
A cold chill like a cube of ice trailing down the spine.  
  
Ronan still recalled the vision of life that it used to be. He remembered making sandcastles in the sandbox by the bright red slide as Matthew ran around in circles or hopped aboard the merry-go-round until it made him dizzy, golden hair catching the sunlight. He remembered Declan on the swingset, always striving to test the limits, to see how far up he could go, rubbing the soles of his shoes into the dirt beneath him before pulling back and launching himself upwards into the sky with veracity electric in his eyes.

He remembered how Aurora would watch them all and smile like they were the most beautiful things god had ever created. He remembered how Matthew would go sprinting towards her, wrapping his small arms around his mother’s legs, and he and Declan would follow suit until they were jumbled in a heap of group hugs and that honey-warm familiarity that’s only ever felt in the presence of family.

Ronan stared at this nightmarish echo of what had once been so full of life and he thought he almost saw his reflection in it. How this soft, inviting museum of amusement had turned into a crimson land of shoddy shadows and edges sharp enough to cut yourself on.

“Son,” Ronan didn’t dare turn around, although he could recognize the voice of the source.

It was deep, rugged; the kind of voice that would sound intelligent even if they were speaking gibberish. Niall Lynch had the voice of a documentary narrator.

“D-dad,” Ronan knew his words would waver, but his tongue felt frozen against the roof of his mouth. Niall appeared in front of him but he looked… deader than dead. Half of his skull was bashed in, merely a grotesque lump of blood and brains, one of his eyeballs was dangling a bit off his face, swinging like a pendulum. Most of his body looked decomposed, half-flesh, half-bones. Was this what he looked like in the casket under the ground?  
  
He was a dead, dead thing.

Not a ghost, but a portent.  
  
Ronan felt sick. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to ram his fists into something hard and made of metal until he’d made a mesh of them. He wanted to hold his breath and never let it out. He wanted to bury himself into a hole and wither away in it.  
  
_God no, please, no. What am I what is this why why why._ _  
__  
_ “Do you remember what I used to say son,” the corpse spoke and it made his ears bleed.  
  
“Dreams are a little bit like death. You’re out of sync with reality, in a foreign land. Everything can touch you and nothing can.”  
  
All Ronan wanted to do was take flight, run, run as far away as he could from that monstrous creature in the guise of his dad. He was overly conscious that he was dreaming, but there was nothing he could do to turn off the dream. Pinching himself didn’t work, and it wasn’t like there were any instructions to how dreaming worked.

The greywaren could control his dreams, but every so often, his dreams would control him instead.

No… Not the dreams, the night terrors.

Suddenly, his father _was_ a night terror. Or perhaps… that’s what he’d been all along. Eyes promising oblivion, wings like massacres, sawdust teeth and skin thick as leather. It laughed awfully, circling above him like a demented vulture.

 _Your fault_ , it seemed to whisper. _Your fault your fault your fault._

Ronan covered both his ears, grimacing so hard it hurt his face. His heart was a trainwreck inside his chest, his stomach a bloodbath. He just wanted it to stop. He just wanted it to end.

“Kerah,” it was Orphan Girl, but he couldn’t quite open his eyes, he couldn’t quite move, if he moved, he would see the nightmare, his father, his dead father, he would-  
  
“Kerah,” Orphan Girl cried, once again.

_“Kerah! Prohibere!”_

Ronan managed to pry his shivering fingers off of his face in time to watch the demonic creature grasp his hoofed friend in it’s nasty talons and take flight once more. “Let her go, you disgusting bastard!” Ronan screamed, but his throat felt like it was twisting, his words lacked weight.  
  
Suddenly the park melted away, darkness flooded in from every crevice, every corner. His heart stopped beating as he watched the Barns dressed in skirts of flames. Aureate fires brilliant as sunsets tearing down every wall, every dream, every memory.

Everything.

“No! Mom! Matthew!” He was sobbing now, but nobody could hear him.

Nothing could touch him and everything could.  
  
Ronan felt his soul leave his body, he felt his knees crumple under his weight, crashing to the cold dirt. His breaths were shrinking ghosts. He felt like he’d just watched everything he’d ever had, everything he’d ever felt tethered to crumble in front of him.  
  
Niall approached once more, still more corpse than human, and handed his son something large and red. “Burn with us, son,” he insisted. “It’s the least you can do.”

* * *

Adam’s head shot up as Ronan began to scream and thrash and howl in his sleep, the whole bed shuddering and screeching under his weight.  
  
Fear encrusted the sandy boy’s features as he pushed his laptop away and turned to inspect his friend. Ronan’s skin was damp, something was bleeding its way through his t-shirt and it wasn’t sweat. “Jesus, Ronan,” Adam gasped as the stinging scent of it infiltrated his nostrils. The boy was doused in gasoline.  
  
“Ronan!” he cried, and then sighed. Of course he wouldn’t hear him. He felt stupid for assuming he could. Ronan’s dream space was a deep demanding sea.    
  
Adam didn’t panic easy. You got used to disasters when they lived down the hall from you.  
  
Still, at the back of Adam’s mind, horrors began to seep through. Ronan was able to bring things from his dreams into real life, what if he… what if he set himself on fire, what if he set the whole apartment on fire? Adam could taste ashes at the back of his own throat. Quickly, he pushed off his elbows and keeled on his knees, gently pressing down on Ronan’s shoulders and shaking him. He had to be soft, he had to be careful. Ronan would be paralyzed for a few seconds, and if he shook him too violently he could hurt himself in the dream which would filter into reality.  
  
“It’s just a dream, Ronan. _Get up!_ ” he said, this time more to console himself than in any actual expectation of getting a response. His breaths came violent and short, alarm rang in his good ear.  
  
“Ronan! Get up!” he leaned in, close, as close as he could without literally giving him mouth to mouth; until he could feel Ronan’s warm, heaving breaths against his face. Adam tapped at the other boy’s cheeks, once, twice, thrice --  
  
Ronan’s eyes burst open, the blue of his pupils seemed to cut sharp, wainscoted with panic. He was awake, he was awake. Adam let out a relieved breath he hadn’t realized he was holding,  
  
Ronan was still partially paralyzed as he always was after waking out of a dream, but his chest heaved cataclysmically and his eyes were almost rolling back into his head.

He was terrified, Adam could tell.  
  
He’d never seen Ronan terrified before, which terrified him.  
  
Instinctively, Adam leaned closer, cupping Ronan’s face in his hands. “Shh, shh,” Adam breathed soothingly. “You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re going to be okay. You’re okay. I’m here. You’re safe. You’re safe.”  
  
Ronan was still trembling, if anyone who didn’t know any better were to walk in at that moment, they would probably think that he was having a seizure. Adam did whatever he thought would help and wrapped his arms around his friend, pulling Ronan up into his embrace, pressing Ronan’s face to his chest.  
  
He didn’t know what he was doing. All he knew was that he had to get it to _stop_ .  
  
Adam just held Ronan like that for a few hurtling minutes, shaking the boy back and forth lightly, pacifyingly. Ronan wheezed against him. For a few minutes, it was just the wind bellowing through the thin walls outside the church building and the boys’ shallow and raspy breathing.  
  
“Shh,” Adam whispered. “Shh. It’s alright. I’m here. I’m here. Nothing can hurt you. You’re alright. You’re alive. It’s all going to be alright.”  
  
As Ronan’s breathing finally began to regulate, Ronan pushed himself off of Adam and slid back into his previous position, either out of mortification or shame or anger or a deadly cocktail of them all. His back hit the bed with a wounded thump. Ronan let out a long, drawled breath. The blue moons of his eyes were transfixed on Adam. He looked so vulnerable then, so broken.  
  
Adam felt his heart crumble. His throat burned. He stared back, rapt, speechless.  
  
“Fuck,” Ronan managed, after which followed a string of filthy, fluorescent curses that lit him like the wildfire he was. “They’re getting worse.”  
  
“Yeah,” Adam let out yet another sigh, his heart rate returning back to normal. “I could tell. Are you okay?”  
  
Ronan didn’t grace his question with an answer, instead, he pushed himself off of the bed and peeled his damp t-shirt over his head. He was all quick, unpredictable movements like lightning.

Adam’s gaze fell from Ronan’s face to his bare collarbones, then darting to his chest and arms. He was all chipped paint skin and thunderbolt eyes, Adam had to look away.  
  
He’d never felt the sudden heat that he felt pooling inside his stomach after looking at another boy shirtless before. He’d seen Gansey shirtless plenty of times, and the boys in the locker room, and while he could appreciate a good physique like anyone else he’d never felt _this_ before.

This inexplicable bloodrush.  
  
He’d found boys attractive before, just the way he found girls attractive, but this was the first time that another boy had managed to incite a… _reaction_ like this.  
  
“Parrish,” Ronan snapped, reeling Adam away from his warying thoughts. “Do you have any pants I could borrow or did the mice already eat holes through everything in your closet?”  
  
Adam would have taken offense, but he was still attempting to fill in the blanks his brain had left him, and considering Ronan had just almost accidentally set himself on fire, he decided to let it slide.  
  
“Cupboard on your left,” Adam replied. “And the next time you happen to be in a situation where you’re half-naked in someone’s apartment and the ratio of pants to politeness is directly proportional, you may want to start by not insulting the other party.”  
  
Ronan smirked at this, wryly. “What makes you think there’ll be a next time?”  
  
“Have you met you?”  
  
He didn’t laugh, but he almost smiled, which was something.  
  
After he’d changed and found himself back in bed and Adam had returned to sifting through his notes on his laptop, he broke the silence that had them surrendered to it.  
  
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Ronan managed, he sounded so weak. It was a tone of voice that Adam wouldn’t have associated with Ronan in his wildest dreams. The boy was a strange thing when stripped of his usual prowess and steely semblance. “I feel pathetic,” he added, when Adam didn’t reply.  
  
“No,” Adam said immediately. “No. You’re not.”  
  
“You’re not mad?” Adam actually had to look into Ronan’s eyes to make sure he wasn’t joking, but there was nothing but sincerity lacing his irises. Adam felt the sudden high of trees. “Why would I be mad?”  
  
“I kept you up all night, made you drive me around, dragged you to church. I bet you wish Gansey hadn’t put you on Ronan duty now, huh.”  
_  
_ _I didn’t really think about it like that,_ Adam realized. Even though normally, yes, he would be mad, he would be very, very mad. Mad enough to curse Ronan’s name and flat out refuse the next time Gansey put him on the job.

But… He felt like something had changed.  

Like there’d been a shift in the tides of some kind. Like that one gear in their relationship that had been out of place had been fixed or replaced.

“It’s fine,” Adam said, staring down at his hands. “You distracted me,”  
  
Ronan looked up at him, meeting his eyes, really meeting his eyes for the first time since he’d awoken and sprawled away from him. “From what?”  
  
“From myself,” he shrugged. Answer ready like a tiny missile in his pocket.  
  
Ronan’s wrist found its way back against the familiar trap of his mouth as he began biting down on his leather bands. Adam was surprised they hadn’t all withered away yet with their constant flirtation with saliva and water and the foggy Virginia air.  
  
“Wow,” Adam said, compelled to break the tension. “Is Ronan Lynch at a loss for words or has hell actually frozen over?”  
  
“I’m always at a loss for words,” Ronan admitted quietly.  
  
Adam was so taken aback by this sudden burst of bald honesty that he felt like he’d become the one without an appetite for words now. Of course, he wasn’t wrong. Ronan spoke more with his body language than he ever did with his mouth. He was all about subtle hand gestures and pointed glares and moony eyes. Ninety percent of his animalistic prowess was built on the way he made a tongue of his body. The only menace he’d ever accomplished with his words was a wide array of swears which were pretty much empty dried up wells at this point.  
  
Adam sighed, his ribcage felt strangely hollow.  
  
“But actions are louder than words. Right?” Adam finally said softly, the question being a rhetorical one. The absolutely baffled frown from Ronan that followed was almost too satisfying. Adam cracked a small smile, discovering a strange pleasure in the knowledge that he could make Ronan Lynch uneasy in a way that nobody else could and immediately feeling guilty about it. “Are you going to come back to bed or am I going to have to give you a reason to?”  
  
“I usually wait until the third date before jumping into bed with someone, thanks,” Ronan joked, but he clenched his jaw and complied, warily crawling back besides him as if he were wading through a swamp and Adam was the crocodile.  
  
“What did you dream?” Adam asked gently, as he turned the lamp, which he’d hastily flicked on when Ronan had initially jolted in his sleep, back off.  
  
It wasn’t too dark, they could read each other’s outlines like oil paintings. Adam shifted so that he was on his side, facing Ronan and propping his head up on his elbow.  
  
Ronan was still, half-sitting, half-lying on his back. He had to look away from Adam’s blue dagger of a gaze.  
  
Ronan almost rebuked with a cheap joke or a flippant _it’s-none-of-your-business_ , but something in his chest caved. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t always an asshole, and he knew when to cap his volatile tendencies. He and Adam were past that anyway. Way, way past it. They’d seen too much together, been through too much.  
  
He’d told Adam things even Gansey didn’t know about him. Adam was so much more than just a friend or a confidant or even a crush, he was this quiet pillar of comfort and familiarity. A bridge in between the empty gaps of himself.

There were nights Ronan would dream that Adam was the horizon and he was the ocean. Adam would remain pinned up there, a smudge of celestial light, and Ronan’s frothing waves would build and skitter and rise in vain attempts to reach him. There were nights he’d dream that Adam was the car crash he’d never anticipated after months of heedless street racing. Nights when he was Adam’s makeshift moon, fated to orbit him forever. He’d always bring back something otherworldly from those dreamy adventures. Limestone rocks the color of the sunset, bits of glass and burnt rubber, moondust in a bottle shaped like a crystal ball. Sometimes even blood and leaves.  
  
When Ronan couldn’t decide between sarcasm or avoidance, he played it safe and picked humor. “I was being chased by a life-sized Elmo, doesn’t sound like much but those damned Sesame Street muppets used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid,”  
  
Adam simply blinked at him. Ronan let out a defeated sigh. “Trust me, Parrish. A dream isn’t a fucking wish your heart makes. You don’t want to know,”  
  
“But I do,” Adam urged, the technicolor of his eyes seemed to pop out like 3D art in the dull strips of light cast from the street lamps.  
  
Ronan was quiet for a long time before he spoke, Adam remained patient; or perhaps he was just ridiculously stubborn. Ronan wasn’t sure. Outside, rain had begun to pelt softly against the hoods of cars and the rusty ceiling, forming a sleepy lullaby.  
  
“The fuck you do,” Ronan sniped, half-heartedly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“Oh trust me,” Adam retorted. “I’ve been there with you. Your night terrors have soared above my very eyes. I know what it’s like. Don’t forget I had to watch you bleed to death.”  
  
“That was Dream-Me,”  
  
“I don’t think it makes a difference. I had to watch _something_ die. Something with your face.”  
  
“And a chicken’s body?”  
  
“Don’t be a dick,”  
  
“I’m not,”  
  
“You felt it, didn’t you? Every dying breath? Every broken knuckle?”  
  
Ronan felt the nerves in his body go slack. “Yeah,” it came out more feeling than sound.  
  
“Whatever,” he added, quickly. “I’m used to it.”  
  
“Nobody gets used to death.” Adam reckoned.  
  
Ronan was pretty sure his heart was in his mouth. Sometimes he didn’t know what to make of Adam’s genuine concern for him, his almost uncertain and yet palpable discerning of every demon that knocked on Ronan’s doorstep.  
  
“I’m kind of fearless,” Ronan shrugged, despite himself.  
  
“You fucking try to be,” Adam said, crisply.  
  
“Really, there’s not much I fear. Not… Not anymore,” Ronan’s voice had stretched birdwing-thin as thoughts of his broken family circled his brain like vultures.  
  
Still, it was true. Most of his fears had already transitioned into reality. When you’d tackled hell itself and walked out of it more or less intact, that’s when you lost a lot of your old grievances. It wasn’t necessarily bravado, merely an insouciance.  
  
Adam didn’t offer him pity, he didn’t wrap his arms around him and tell him that it would be okay like he'd done before, he simply repeated his question. Lips pursed, jaw square. “What did you dream?”  
  
“A demon,” he replied, voice hoarse. “Shaped like my dad.”  
  
Adam was quiet a moment, Ronan couldn’t quite read his expression. The rain continued to breathe soft prickling songs to marinate the silence. Adam’s breath seemed in tune with it.  
  
“What about the gasoline?” he asked.  
  
“The Barns were on fire. Everything I grew up getting to know.”  
  
Adam turned to look at Ronan. He knew how to wear pain like a bronze medal instead of a bruise, but Adam was able to cut right through the facades. He was hurting, it would’ve been clear even if they’d been in blinding darkness.  
  
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Adam said, after some consideration. “I’m trying to get as far away from my past as humanly possible and you keep chasing yours and we both seem to be failing in some crucial way.”  
  
“Hilarious,” Ronan replied tersely. “We should record this conversation and send it in to America’s Funniest Home Videos.”  
  
“Oh c’mon,” Adam said, letting his Henrietta drawl slip as it often did in the way he pronounced certain words or rolled his tongue over fluid sentences. “You know what I mean,”  
  
Ronan thought Adam’s accent sounded like swallowing honey. “Fuck the past. I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore. My dreams can taunt me all they want, it’s not going to change what’s already happened.”  
  
Adam studied Ronan’s face like he did his auto parts back at the garage, necessary scrutiny to determine the malfunction, the leakage, the flat tire. Ronan was built up of a thousand broken parts, a locomotive running on pure spirit and spite. He was a soft thing hardened and transformed into a cruel machine by the weight of his burdened past, but the boy Adam had started to imagine at the very beginning of the night, back at the Barns, the one Gansey often spoke about in his stories, he wasn’t completely gone. No, some of that softness still filtered through like sunlight through the stained windows of St. Agnes.  
  
Suddenly, Adam thought he understood something about Ronan’s tattoo.  
  
Ronan felt like a bug under a microscope, he felt like he would melt and there would be nothing but ashes left of him when Adam looked at him like that, with that ineffable expression plastered on the knightly ridges of his face.  
  
“See something you like, Parrish?” Ronan hoped the anxiousness didn’t flood through the thick waters of his tone as he arched an eyebrow.  
  
Adam didn’t respond, instead he leaned a little closer so that his chin was merely inches away from Ronan’s own. His breath was warm against Ronan’s skin. Goosebumps chased their way up his spine. “Jesus,” Adam whispered.  
  
“Sorry. Wrong guy,” Ronan replied, but his throat constricted.  
  
“Why did you pick me?” Adam asked, lashes drawn low as he trailed the lightest finger over the back of Ronan’s neck where his tattoo began. The touch was a ghosting, Adam’s finger was cold as a raindrop, Ronan’s skin still stung, his heart sped like a whipped race horse. Huh, he truly was whipped.  
  
“You’re shitting me, right?” Ronan spat, thrown by the non sequitur.  
  
“Can you ever answer a question without swerving away from it?”  
  
“This isn’t the fucking Bachelorette, Parrish, you don’t just ask a question like that.”  
  
“I want to know,” he insisted, his hand dropping against the pillow in between them.  
  
Adam didn’t know what he was thinking, but he wanted to _see_. He wanted to see what Ronan saw. He so desperately wanted to understand, because he didn’t, not any of it. How could this boy bred of golden pastures and churches and dreams want someone as lowly and lifeless as Adam? He didn’t know what he expected, perhaps for Ronan to pull up a mirror and define his own reflection for him, perhaps for him to admit that he didn’t want Adam after all, that wanting Adam was just another contrary pretense he had to pull to spit fire at the world.  
  
He needed to _know_ .  
  
Was Adam Parrish only worthy because he wasn’t?  
  
“You’ve tread the slippery slope of religion. What does your bible have to say about someone like me?”  
  
Ronan wasn’t quite sure what Adam meant by someone like him. In all the divine ways Ronan had imagined Adam broaching the subject, it had never been like this.  
  
“Do I look like a Catholic school girl?” Ronan berated. “Seriously, Parrish. What’s with you?”  
  
_Ronan didn't say, I would worship at the alter or your hands.  
_  
_Ronan didn't say, when I look at you, I feel like my faith's been restored.  
_  
_Ronan didn't say, the aureole light in your eyes pierces my whole being._  
  
Adam closed his eyes. He could smell the rain that was falling outside, he could smell the damp richness of the soil, feel the water droplets sliding off of sunflowers like his arms were petals.  
  
Cabeswater writhed a furious river inside of him.  
  
“Maybe it’s Cabeswaters’ fault,”  
  
It took Ronan about an entire minute to realize what the absolute idiot was on about.  
  
Ronan narrowed his eyes. Adam was a sad portrait in the dark.  
  
“No,” he replied darkly. “Cabeswater can’t make us feel things.”  
  
Adam hummed, head tilted slightly back, eyes still closed. “Can it heighten emotions that are already present?”  
  
Ronan gulped. “Possibly,”  
  
All those nights he’d spent questioning the very seams of himself, loathing his reality, feeling trapped inside of his own home, his own body. Nobody should have to feel like that. Ever.

Adam would never talk about it, his bruising upbringing; but he recalled this one particular evening when he’d been about fourteen, they were sat in the dining room. Dinner was bland spaghetti and whiskey. There was never a meal without alcohol. It had been a surprisingly calm week, he hadn’t had an accident in about six days, which was a lucky streak in Adam’s book. His parents were gossiping about their neighbors, Larry and Morgan. Adam recalled the absolutely grotesque look seared into his father’s face, the loathing so evident it could probably glow in the dark. He recalled the way the word _‘faggot’_ slid off his father’s tongue like a cleaver, back before Adam had even known what the controversial word meant.  
  
“Fucking faggot scum,” Robert barked gruffly. “It’s a disease, honey,” he remembered the weight in his father’s voice, the man always blathered on about subjects he rarely understood like he’d invented them. “They should be shot down like dogs before they infect the rest of the population.”  
  
Adam remembered playing with his spaghetti, attempting to spell his name with the noodles.  
  
“Don’t play with your food,” his mother had chided. “You better not be like those homo-retards now, Adam. Lord knows I don’t need ‘nother reason to beat some sense into ya’” Robert was looking him square in the eye, tobacco stained mouth twisted in a sneer.  
  
“You so much as look at another boy for longer than five seconds and I'll run you out of town myself.”

God.

Adam hated his father, he hated that gritty accent, that ugly trailer.  
  
This felt like, in some way, a rebellion, and Adam didn't consider himself to be very petty, but perhaps petty people like his father deserved a taste of their own poison.  
  
Although he’d never given it much thought, he realized he just didn’t care. He didn’t care if a person was a girl or a boy. He cared if they cared about him. Blue did, Ronan certainly did…  
  
_What is this?_ He thought.  
  
Ronan couldn’t stand the silence anymore, it was eating at him, piercing his flesh. He’d given Adam enough time to mull things over, to sit there like a statue and ponder or whatever it was that he was doing. They were not kings, not yet. Time would not bow before them.  
  
“Adam?”  
  
Adam met Ronan’s eyes, there was something overwrought in his that concerned Ronan, but he couldn’t quite place what it was.  
  
“You didn’t answer me,” he muttered, dryly, tiredly.  
  
“Do you remember what you said?” Ronan asked, his chest compressing.  
  
Adam frowned. “What?”  
  
“Actions speak louder than words.”  
  
Before Adam could even open his mouth to respond, Ronan did something stupid and wonderful and crazy, something he’d subconsciously been aching to do ever since he’d laid eyes on the marvel that was Adam Parrish.

Ronan kissed him.  
  
At first, it was just lips meeting lips, a warm jolt that spread from his gut all the way to the tips of his toes and Adam’s eyes widening in surprise.  
  
For a moment, Ronan was almost discouraged, but then he felt Adam’s eyelashes flutter closed against his face and when Adam kissed him back, the frenzy deepened. Ronan’s fist found its way into Adam’s hair, Adam leaned into the kiss like it was a train he’d almost missed.  
  
Ronan couldn’t quite believe it. Kissing the real Adam was nothing like kissing Dream Adam. In his dreams, he’d always known what to expect, it had turned into a delirious routine that was more fantasy than feeling. This kiss however… It felt like every car crash, ocean, moon he’d ever dreamt about. It felt like all of these knots he’d let fester inside of him untangling for the first time in forever. It felt _real_.

Ronan pulled back first, his blue eyes shown wide with intrigue and fascination and maybe even a little disbelief. Adam watched him inhale and exhale. Ronan bit his lip. They just stared at each other for a few seconds of mute blooming and then Adam pulled him into another kiss.  
  
Adam felt this one everywhere like a forest fire. He felt it beneath his navel like heat, inside his brain like a fever, rattling in his chest like thunder.  
  
Ronan had explained it in the best way that he could, with his body, and Adam felt increasingly glad for it. Maybe the whys didn’t even matter, maybe it only mattered that it was.  
  
Adam’s body had only ever known violent sensations, and so this beautiful sensation had swept him away from semblance, rendered him rabid, relinquished.  
  
“God,” he huffed out, in between interrupted breaths. “God, god, god,”  
  
It was a tangle of lips, a mess of collarbones and cheeks, a dancing of limbs and hands and feet. Ronan had never felt anything like it before, this brazen desire, this mind-numbing remedy.  
  
It was remedial, Ronan realized, and all his shame perished.  
  
This felt too right to be as wrong as he’d claimed it to be.  
  
It was the scent of forest and scarred boyhood and daffodils in the rain. It was the scent of gasoline and leather and sandalwood.  
  
Adam felt connected to Ronan in the familiar way he was connected to Cabeswater. When they kissed, he felt all the doubt and the self-questioning and the hollowness he’d always felt inside his own body wash away, replaced with a flood of feelings. His limbs carried water, his arms were the branches of a locust tree, he was a moonflower blooming open.  
  
Ronan’s heart was pumping bullets in his chest, it was the wildest ache he’d ever felt. Wilder than street races or midnight drives. Wilder than every one of his bottled up dreams.  
  
Suddenly his dreams were made of ceramic, shattering to the floor beneath him. He wished he could dream up something as quiet and soft and beautiful as this forest boy in his arms. Ronan could hear Cabeswater susurrus its approval in his ears. This was better than any dream. This was where dreams came from.  
  
He could create ghost lights and hooved girls and entire forests, but he was no artist, he couldn’t paint something like Adam Parrish into being, and maybe Adam really was a magician, because nothing had ever made Ronan catch fire like he had.  
  
When they pulled away again, they were both breathing hard and fast, foreheads still pressed together, breaths ghosting over each other’s mouths. Adam’s hands were on Ronan’s face and Ronan felt like he was going to die.  
  
Once, when Ronan was young and Niall was telling him one of his stories, a certain quote he’d read had piqued his interest. “Do you know what happiness is, kid?” he’d say, and Ronan had replied something juvenile and ordinary. “Happiness is when every thing inside you goes out and comes back in, newly.” Ronan hadn’t understood then, and he’d tried desperately to grapple with the alien notion for years. Niall had added that Aurora made him feel that way.  
  
When Ronan had kissed Adam he thought for a brief fluttering moment that he understood what it felt like to be happy, to finally have in your possession the thing you wanted most.  
  
“God,” Adam rasped, one more time.  
  
“Well shit, Parrish. Just start a prayer circle,” Ronan teased, curling his tongue.  
  
“I feel like I’m inside of one,” Adam breathed, eyes electric, lips parted slightly in awe or dismay or a little bit of both.  
  
Ronan smirked at that. “You know, you kiss like you’re famished,”  
  
“Maybe I have been,” Adam admitted softly, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath like he still couldn’t quite digest what was happening.  
  
Ronan’s gaze followed the light pooling in from the windows. The night sky had gone from a shade of deep blue to a jaded purple. It was almost dawn.  
  
“Fuck, we’ve been up all night,” Ronan muttered.  
  
“It doesn’t matter, I won't miss today’s test.”  
  
“Yeah I’ll make you some coffee, you’ll be fresh as a daisy,”  
  
Adam cocked an eyebrow, clearly amused.  “You know how to make coffee?”  
  
Ronan looked insulted. “Do I _look_ like a heathen?”  
  
“Sometimes,” Adam replied, Ronan couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.  
  
“There’s still a couple hours left,” Ronan said, even though he had a feeling neither of them would be able to sleep.  
  
Adam didn’t reply, he just stared at the slow-furling light, rather disillusioned. Hair mussed, t-shirt ruffled. Ronan wanted desperately to take it off and pin him to his chest. He urged himself not to. Perhaps something as delicate as Adam needed time. Time and consideration.  
  
So they just sat there, drinking in the silence until it got too loud. Adam with his head rested  against the headboard, Ronan with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, pretending to dream while counting Adam’s breaths in his head.  
  
“I never thought,” Adam started.  
  
“What?” Ronan said, eyes still closed.  
  
“I just never thought that you’d still want me once I gave you what you’d been asking for. I kept turning it around in my head. Trying to figure it out. You, this.”  
  
Someday Ronan was going to obliterate all that nasty self-doubt that festered in Adam’s brain like some kind of vicious tumor. He craved fire and all Adam tasted like were ashes. Wonderful ashes, ashes that he was determined to cultivate into something meaningful.  
  
Ronan bit Adam’s neck in response, in demonstration.  
  
Adam sucked in a breath.  
  
“I’ll always want you, Parrish,” Ronan finally whispered, softly, against the skin of Adam’s collarbone.  
  
That was all Adam needed to hear as he lifted Ronan’s chin to drown him in another kiss and they burned the quiet to embers together and Ronan put each of Adam’s fingers to his mouth and kissed them and Adam ran his lips over every capering edge of his tattoo. Mouth pressed to claws and beaks and wings. He was a raven in pursuit.  
  
They fell asleep curled into each other as the sun rose, bathing Henrietta in dew and fog and splintered light.  
  
Adam thought that if nothing made sense in his world, at least this did. Of course it was this maelstrom, gut-punch of a boy who he ultimately lost himself to. The creator of dreams and otherworldly things. He didn’t think of how he’d planned to leave Henrietta and never look back. He didn’t wonder if he was playing with fire. He didn’t think he was playing at all. He didn’t think what would Gansey say or if this would change things or if this arose questions he’d never asked himself about himself.

It wasn’t the time for thinking, only one for revelations.  
  
A night of truths.  
  
And Adam knew, as he watched Ronan beside him, a snake in slumber, a creature just as quixotic and mystifying and lovely as his beloved forest, as this magical town, as their impossible quest- that he would find himself waking to this again and again and again.  
  
Normally, he would’ve woken up cranky and exhausted and laser-focused on getting some last-minute revision in for the big test.  
  
Instead, the morning was soft-focused, like he’d awoken to a dream, and even though it was the same four walls of his ruddy apartment, and he could already hear the fizzling of early traffic and neighbor’s dogs and curling wind, he felt quiet. Like for once, his head wasn’t a maze garden, or a rocket ready to launch itself into the void. For once, his head was empty of all thoughts except for the heat of Ronan, ethereal and weighty, next to him.  
  
Maybe lonesome didn't describe him after all. Maybe it did once, but he could write himself a new definition.  
  
Adam finally knew what it was like to be quiet.

He thought he finally understood something about himself. He understood so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from the song, 'Cut Out Angels' by 'The Used' and if you haven't already I highly recommend listening to the song and reading the lyrics because they really scream pynch!! 
> 
> I wrote this before I'd read The Raven King so I apologize for any inconsistencies, I imagine this is an AU that took place sometime after the events of 'Blue Lily, Lily Blue' just for those of y'all who might be wondering.
> 
> All of the semi-religious stuff is just Adam's internal conflict and the reflection of Ronan and Adam's relationship (remember a fortuitous combination of the objects of Ronan's worship?) so yeah, I found this dynamic really fun to play with but it's in no way an extension on my views on religion and I apologize if there was anything offensive in the way I wrote it.
> 
> If you like my work you should stay tuned and follow me on [tumblr](http://winterblues.tumblr.com/) because I will be updating this collection with more drabbles from time to time. 
> 
> Oh and lastly, please please please take a moment to comment and let me know what you thought about this fic/your favorite parts from it - anything at all!! It would be very encouraging, thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> come fangirl with me on [tumblr.](http://www.winterblues.tumblr.com/)  
> also, this particular drabble was influenced by [this](http://quoth-the-ravenclaw.tumblr.com/post/134385821929/library-aus-based-off-my-experiences-working-in-a) post.  
> please leave me a comment if you liked it, that would mean so much. <3


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